


the stages of waking

by dandelionlighters



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26634286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionlighters/pseuds/dandelionlighters
Summary: After learning that she killed her sister in the Merge, Josie Saltzman passes out from the grief. She wakes up as Josie Parker. Everything is different.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman
Comments: 374
Kudos: 834





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are three stages of waking:
> 
> Remembering who you are.  
> Forgetting what you dreamt.   
> Letting go of what you felt in that dream.
> 
> —Lang Leav

Josie knew she was no longer in the forest of her own mind right away. This was different. The woods were much warmer than this, hot and thick with the remnants of fire and magic. The darkness liked fire a lot. Or maybe that was just Josie. 

Maybe that was what they had in common. 

If Josie knew fire, the darkness knew smoke. 

There was no fire or smoke, now, though. Just air. For the first time in a long time, the siphoner felt like she could breathe. Soot no longer lingered in the back of her throat, ash didn’t cling to the inside of her nose. 

Yet, something felt...wrong. _Off_. 

It was colder, now, too. The tips of Josie’s fingers were chilled to the bone. She tried to move them, but they were numb. 

She shivered, and opened her eyes. 

She was in her father’s office. That was the first thing she noticed. The second thing was that Alaric was also here, sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. 

She thought he looked sad, when he didn’t think she could see him.

“Dad?” 

Alaric looked up from his desk, and she saw that his eyes were bloodshot and puffy, like he had been crying. The corners of his lips forced up into a smile when he saw her, but Josie could tell something was wrong. The smile fell within seconds, like he didn’t have the strength to keep faking it. 

“Jo?” His voice seemed to echo. “Is that you?” 

The next thing she knew, Alaric was standing up and Josie was swept into his arms, the crushing weight of them nearly suffocating her. He held on too tight, too desperately, but the siphoner hadn’t been hugged in weeks, so her own grip only tightened. 

Then, she was reminded of the cold. It clawed at her insides and tore at her chest, right over the space where her heart should be. That was what it was, she realized, what she had been feeling since she opened her eyes.

She felt empty. Cold. 

She sunk into her father’s hold for warmth, but his arms had chilled in her absence, and she found it only made her feel even colder.

She stepped back and pulled away, looking around. Where was her sister? Where were her friends? “Where is everyone? How—“

_ How am I here?  _

Last she remembered, she was exiled to the walls of her own mind, and she had only herself to blame. 

_She_ was the one who had let dark magic corrupt her, who had started using it for nothing and then one day, couldn’t stop for _anything_. By getting everything she had ever wanted—powerful, strong, untouchable—she had also lost it all. 

“What happened?” Josie’s eyes darted wildly around the office. It was oddly still. Quiet. The silence unnerved her. 

She forced herself to stop searching when her eyes caught a dark shadow in the corner of the room, feeling fear choke her up with the thought that it might be the darkness chasing after her. 

She looked back to her dad, but Alaric’s eyes were wet and clenched shut. A tear slipped through and fell down his cheek. Was he in pain? 

“Maybe you should sit down,” the man said, but Josie saw the way his jaw trembled, heard the way his voice cracked around the words. He kept rubbing hand over his chest like it was hurting, like he was struggling to breathe. 

“No, I...” Josie opened her mouth and closed it. She was so confused. What happened? “How am I here? I thought _she_...” 

She thought the _darkness_ had taken over her for good. Even now, Josie was still wearing _her_ damn clothes. It made her skin crawl. “How am I back?” 

Her father’s jaw clenched. When he looked at his daughter, his gaze was everywhere but nowhere, unseeing but seeing. His throat bobbed underneath his beard. “Because she got what she wanted.” 

He sounded angry. Bitter. Far away. Like they weren’t even standing in the same room. 

“Wha-what do you mean?” Josie asked. Dread formed a pit in her stomach. Her dad couldn’t look her in the eye. 

“You won the Merge, Josie,” he said. Josie sputtered out her words. Her mind swarmed. She struggled to pull air into her aching lungs. 

“No. No. I-I don’t understand, I don’t _understand_ ,” she murmured softly, begging, gasping for air. She shook her head, in part to deny it and in part to clear her thoughts. Heat crawled up her throat. Her chest grew tight. Tears built up in her eyes. “I wasn’t even here, I didn’t do anything. I don’t understand. _Please_ , Dad, I don’t understand, I—“ 

Her heart shook in her chest. Where was Lizzie? Where was she? Where was her sister? Josie tried to search for her within herself, but she could no longer feel her. The twin bond she had grown so used to, so familiar with, was gone. 

Empty. _Cold_.

“I need you to take a deep breath for me.” Her father grabbed her by the shoulders. It wasn’t enough for her to look him in the eye. The tears consumed her. She couldn’t stop crying, but she couldn’t understand why all the same. Everything was fine. Everything was okay. She tried to make herself believe the words, but with every passing second she struggled to deny reality. “Breathe. _Breathe_.” 

She couldn’t. She _couldn’t_. Her lungs were shaking and she _fucking_ couldn’t. 

“Your sister is gone.” 

Josie let out a sound between a sob and a whimper, and pushed her father away. She couldn’t bear the sight of him. She couldn’t bear the sight of him _looking at her_. She couldn’t bear anything at all. 

God, _Lizzie_. 

How many times had she sat in this office with her sister? How many memories had they shared together here? It didn’t feel real. 

It didn’t feel—

The siphoner dug her nails into her hairline and dragged them down her pale face, leaving deep red lines in their wake. She let out a scream that shook the school. _God_. She needed to feel like she was reaching down her throat and clawing at her heart, like she was ripping at herself, tearing herself apart, or maybe that was just her sister. 

Maybe that was just what it felt like when you killed your own twin. 

Oh, God, the world was so _cold_ , now. So empty. 

Had she suffered? Josie wondered. No. She knew. The darkness would have made sure of it. It would have made sure her sister died in pain. 

Josie ran her hands back over her face a second time, forgetting that they were still covered in her sister’s blood. Her lips parted with another silent scream, vision going crimson red. 

Then black. And—

_Darkness_.

Josie fainted. 

It was not her father that caught her. 

_Hope_. 

—

Josie’s head spun. Pounded. Whatever the word was. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt glued shut, like someone had stitched the lashes of them together. Maybe it was because she had been crying, or maybe she was dead.

She hoped she was dead. She couldn’t live without her sister. She didn’t even want to think about it. She hoped it was all a dream, and when she opened her eyes, she would be back in the woods. Yes! She would be back in the forest! 

Josie shifted her body around to experiment, but she didn’t move an inch. She was trapped beneath something. She didn’t know what it was. It felt like...bed sheets? 

She blinked a single eye open, and then immediately shut it again. Light swarmed her vision and blinded her. It only made her headache worse. She mumbled something unintelligible and tried to move again. 

“...I think she’s waking up...” 

The voice came from Josie’s right. It was familiar but the siphoner couldn’t place it. 

She sneaked another peek through her eyelids, and finally her vision adjusted to the lights. She noticed that it was night, and all the windows were dark. She still couldn’t move, though, and when she glanced down, she saw that someone had tucked her into a bed.

An infirmary bed. She was in the hospital wing of the school. The voice she had heard before belonged to the head nurse of the boarding school, Wilma. Another nurse Josie didn’t know the name of was on the other side of her bed, tinkling with some of the machines. 

Oh, God. Josie gulped. She was hooked to an IV. And she was wearing a dress.   


Not the usual black one that the _darkness_ had taken a liking to, but a pretty ball gown with multiple shades of pink. It barely fit underneath the sheets. 

Huh. Had someone taken off her clothes? No. That didn’t make sense. Why would they do that just to make her wear something else? What was the point of this dress? 

Josie also noticed that the dress was wet. It clung to her skin uncomfortably. Her hair was wet, too. She tried to touch it, but her limbs were too heavy to move so she just stopped. 

“Hi, honey.” Wilma was now leaning over her with searching, kind eyes. Her voice was too loud. Josie had to clench her eyes shut to quell the headache pulsing at her temples. “How are you feeling?” 

The siphoner opened her mouth. Or, at least, she tried to. It was dry like cotton balls, and there was a disgusting taste on her tongue. Like lake water. But that couldn’t be right. 

Right?

She swallowed and tried again. 

“I...” Nothing else came out. She wanted to ask about Lizzie, but she feared the answer. She had somehow deluded herself into thinking that the Merge had just been some cruel nightmare. 

“Okay.” Thank God Wilma was patient. She always had been in her decade with the school. That was what Josie loved most about her. “Can you remember anything about what happened, honey?” 

Josie paused. She blinked. Her mind felt foggy. Empty. _Cold_. What had she been thinking about? 

“Uh...” Her eyes threatened to flutter shut again. She wanted to go to sleep. It felt like she had been awake for centuries. 

“Let’s start with your name,” Wilma supplied helpfully. Her eyebrows furrowed together in concern. “Can you tell me that?” 

Oh. Yeah. Josie knew _that_. 

“Josie,” she said. The two nurses breathed out a sigh of relief. “Josie Saltzman.” 

The two nurses immediately went rigid. Josie got the feeling she had done something wrong. She watched Wilma and the other nurse share a worried look. 

“Saltzman?” The nurse frowned. “No, honey, you’re Josie Parker.” 

_Josie_ _Parker_? _What the hell?_

The siphoner shook her head. That wasn’t right. She tried to sit up but it only made her head spin even more. One of the nurses placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her, but Josie was so out of it that she didn’t know which one had done so. 

Josie Parker. She repeated the name several times in her head, but it still didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any sense at all. 

“Okay, why don’t we try a different question?” Wilma asked kindly. “Do you know how old you are?” 

Another simple question, yet Josie felt unease creep up her spine. What if she answered it wrong again?

She waited a beat, and then in a small voice, she said, “Seventeen.” 

Seventeen. It was her birthday today. Or maybe it was no longer today? Maybe the Merge had happened years ago. Oh, God. Josie felt her eyes tear up again. She killed her sister on their birthday. 

No. She didn’t. She _didn’t_. 

(She tried to convince herself.)

“I just turned today, actually,” she began to babble. She probably sounded crazy. The nurses looked at her like she was. “Lizzie did, too. Do you, do you know where my sister is?” 

She sat up again but the nurses moved her back down. They began to talk over her. 

“What are you thinking?” the nurse whose name Josie didn’t know asked. 

“Retrograde amnesia with confabulation?” Wilma wondered out loud. “It should be temporary.” 

A contemplative silence followed. Josie struggled to sit up.

“Go alert Headmaster Saltzman and Headmistress Salvatore that Miss Parker is awake, please,” Wilma said, finally. Josie’s eyes widened. Her mom was here? It had been months since she had last seen her. 

She watched the other nurse nod and leave. Wilma looked back at the siphoner and sighed. “Don’t worry, dear, we’ll get this sorted out. For the time being, you should know that you’re fifteen. Do you want us to call your mom for you?” 

_Fifteen_? No. That wasn’t possible. The siphoner forced her head to still lest she shake it in denial again. 

And what did Wilma mean? Hadn’t she just called her mom for her already? Unless Headmistress Salvatore wasn’t her mom, but then that would mean...

She was no longer Josie Saltzman.   


But how was that possible? Had she somehow switched places with whoever this fifteen-year-old Josie Parker girl was? It sounded silly. Josie almost laughed. 

Her confusion must have shown on her face, because Wilma didn’t press the issue. She didn’t ask about her mom again, and instead grabbed a clipboard by Josie’s bedside table and wrote something down. 

Josie watched her for a moment, before her curiosity overwhelmed her. She didn’t have a choice when her mouth opened on its own. 

“How did I get here?” she asked softly.

She tried to remember, but the more she thought about it the more the answer evaded her—like the fleeting memory of a dream—until suddenly she could not even recall the question itself. 

This time, when the siphoner sat up, Wilma didn’t stop her. She frowned and set the clipboard down. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Until—

“You really don’t remember, do you?” 

“N-No, I don’t. What happened?” Josie asked again. She shivered. It was so cold. 

“You fell into the lake by the dock,” the nurse said. “Miss Marshall saved you.”

_Marshall_? Josie hadn’t heard that name in years. “Who?” 

There was movement by the door. Josie looked up and gasped quietly. A lone figure stood in the shadows, dripping water onto the floor. She had wild, auburn hair that stopped at her chest and dark, blue eyes that stopped Josie’s heart. 

For just a second. 

“ _Hope_?” 

Hope Marshall stared back and said nothing at all. She had a thin towel wrapped around her shoulders, but it did nothing to hide the fact that she was soaked to the bone. She wasn’t wearing a dress like Josie was, but instead an older version of the school uniform that the siphoner hadn’t seen anyone wear in years. She looked younger, too, like the stress of fighting Malivore monsters hadn’t yet taken a toll on her. 

The sleeves of her white button-up were rolled up to her elbows, and it was so damp that the shirt was nearly see-through. Heart in throat, Josie swallowed and glanced away, feeling oddly flushed. She saw that the other girl wasn’t wearing any shoes, and the dark slacks of her uniform stuck to her skin like glue. 

At last, after several long moments passed, Hope gave a stiff nod. Her intense gaze never left Josie, and it lingered on her like a burn. The siphoner felt unnerved by it. She looked down at her lap and tried to collect her thoughts. 

So, not only was she no longer _Josie Saltzman_ , but _Hope Mikaelson_ was still Hope Marshall in this world. Did that mean that no one knew Hope was a tribrid yet, and that the girl was still hiding her identity? And if so, did that also mean that her parents hadn’t died yet? Or did it simply mean that she was an entirely different person altogether? 

It begged the question:

Who was Josie Parker, and what had she been doing with Hope Marshall at the lake? 

“Josie!” There was a frantic voice at the door. It came from a blonde wearing an elegant, blue dress. She pushed passed Hope and ran to Josie’s bedside. “Are you okay?! I should have known something was wrong when I couldn’t find you at the party.” 

_Lizzie_.

Josie’s breath caught. It felt like relief. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all the kudos and comments :)

Josie didn’t know what to do. She could only stare at the sister she thought she had lost, the sister she thought she had killed, and not believe it. She couldn’t grasp that Lizzie was here in front of her, now.

_Alive_. 

Her eyes stung with fresh tears. She didn’t know how it was possible—how it was possible that she could cry again after earlier, how it was possible that Lizzie was _here_. 

It seemed that just minutes ago her father had told her she won the Merge, but it seemed like years ago all the same. A part of her wondered if she had just imagined it, if she was just imagining _this_. 

Any second now, she would be brought right back to reality, she was sure. But the seconds came and passed, and Josie stayed stuck in this unfamiliar, familiar place. 

To answer Lizzie’s question, she wasn’t okay. Her mind felt split, fractured between an old world she no longer wanted to live in and a new world she had no memories, no recollection, of.

Was this her second chance, a dream she would never want to wake up from? Or was she just walking into another nightmare where her sister would be dead again by the end of it? 

“...They told me you almost _drowned_ ,” Lizzie continued, now ranting. She sat down on the side of Josie’s bed and reached for the brunette’s hands with her own. They were warm. Josie let out the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “The whole school is talking about it. _Alyssa Chang_ knew before I did, can you believe that? She couldn’t wait to rub it in my face, that little psycho roommate of yours...” 

Josie was so lost in her thoughts that the last part about having a roommate went completely over her head. She didn’t even hear it, she was still stuck on the fact that Alyssa Chang existed in this world. Josie had to bite her lip to stop from pouting. 

Then, she had to stop herself from crying as Lizzie moved closer and pressed their bodies tightly together. 

To Lizzie, it felt like just another hug with her sister. To Josie, it felt like a breath of fresh air after months of ducking her head underwater, trying to break the surface, drowning, and struggling not to show it. 

She clenched her eyes shut and tried to commit the feeling to memory, just in case she later went to sleep and woke up realizing that this had all been a dream. To commit to memory the way her heart warmed in her chest, the way the heat of Lizzie’s body made her feel safe and like nothing bad would ever happen again. 

With a start, she realized that she hadn’t hugged her sister in a very long time. How long had she been trapped in her head? She wondered. How long had she allowed the darkness to take over? How long had she even _invited_ it inside her? 

“I called Mom.” Lizzie pulled away from the hug first. She had no idea how much Josie needed it, and how horrible she felt when it ended. “She’s on her way right now with Aunt Liv and Uncle Luke.” 

_Aunt Liv? Uncle Luke?_ Josie’s eyebrows scrunched up together. Her temple started to pound again. She rubbed at her forehead to ease the ache but found that she couldn’t. Every time she repeated the names in her head, she became even more confused. 

She couldn’t remember ever hearing them before, but maybe it had something to do with how her last name was now Parker, and not Saltzman. 

Lizzie didn’t seem to notice her sister’s confusion. A little snidely, with a roll of her eyes to match, the blonde added, “Of course, it only took your life being in danger for her to make an appearance for our birthday.” 

Oh. 

Okay. 

So, technically, it was their birthday today—tonight?—which meant that they were in March, though Josie had no idea what year. If she was only turning fifteen, did that imply that she was in the past? No. It couldn’t be. 

Perhaps she was in an entirely different universe altogether? Did such a thing even exist? Well, at least Lizzie was still acting the same. She was obviously upset that their mom hadn’t bothered to show up for their birthday, as she was every year back in their _own_ world. 

Hmm. Maybe some things never really changed at all. It seemed only right that this Josie Parker would have an absentee mother just like Josie Saltzman did. Though, the question remained: who was her mom? 

“Wait,” Josie blurted. “Who _are_ our parents?” 

It was the wrong thing to say. 

In the far corner of the room, Wilma stopped pretending to be paying attention to her clipboard. She looked up. Her forehead wrinkled. 

Hope, who had been staring at the floor—maybe she felt that she was intruding on a family moment or just simply wasn’t supposed to be here—snapped her own head up and pinned Josie with another intense, unreadable look. 

For a second, there was a spark of something behind her eyes, like curiosity or interest or surprise, Josie couldn’t tell, before it was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving the siphoner with the feeling that she hadn’t truly seen it at all. 

Hours later, in the morning, she would realize that the emotion had been _relief_. But why the other girl would be relieved to know that Josie couldn’t remember anything about what happened at the lake, she would not find out for a long time. 

“Are you joking or something?” Lizzie leaned away, taken aback. Her voice was shrill. She looked how the brunette felt: like she had seen a ghost. She shook her head. “Because that’s not funny, Jo.” 

Josie wanted to laugh and say, _ha, just kidding, it was only a joke,_ but she said none of those things, and didn’t laugh either. She hated that she couldn’t remember anything about being Josie Parker, and more than that, she hated that her memories as Josie Saltzman couldn’t help her here. 

Her silence only made the blonde even more nervous. 

“Jo?” she repeated, but didn’t get an answer once again. Wilma quickly stepped in. 

“Miss Parker,” she said. “Your sister is currently experiencing some form of memory loss. We don’t know what brought it on, but we don’t think it’ll last for very long. Can I talk to you and Miss Marshall outside in the hall for a minute?” 

Lizzie whipped her head around, as if she had only just noticed now that Hope was in the same room, even though she had passed her on her way inside. Josie watched the blonde’s eyes narrow into a glare. It was a complete contrast from just seconds ago. 

Josie frowned. 

For a moment, she wondered if Josie Parker had slipped a love note under Hope Marshall’s door. She wondered if she had also instantly regretted it and burned the entire room down, if Lizzie had made some comment that Josie was obsessed with Hope, if Josie had lied and told her that Hope said mean things about her to distract from herself. 

It would be the only reasonable explanation for Lizzie Parker’s animosity, unless something else had happened in this world to split the two girls apart. 

Had she...?

“What are _you_ doing here?” Lizzie spit out, crossing her arms and standing up. 

_Yup_. Josie knew for sure now that she had. Well, she thought, it was only right that she would have a crush on Hope in this universe, too. 

God. Even now, Josie couldn’t resist peeking up at her beneath her lashes, sneaking glances every few seconds while still trying to understand where she stood with Lizzie. 

Maybe Lizzie Parker was a stranger, and maybe it shouldn’t have been, but it was so, so easy to fall back into old habits like the two of them had never stopped being sisters. 

“Lizzie!” Josie scolded, like she had done almost every time the blonde had been mean to Hope in the past. It felt normal. It felt _right_. Blushing, she added, “Don’t be rude.” 

“No, Josie,” Lizzie returned easily, before looking back at Hope. “My sister is _clearly_ not feeling well and—“ 

She snapped her head back to Josie. “ _She_ has the nerve to stand here and make you feel worse.” 

“Make me feel worse?” The words slipped out before Josie could stop herself. _By simply standing in the same room?_ She thought. That was crazy. “She _saved_ me—“ 

“No,” a soft voice cut her off. It was Hope. Surprised, Josie realized that she hadn’t heard her speak before. She wasn’t expecting it at all. “She’s right.” 

Josie’s mouth opened and closed. 

The brunette looked up and their eyes met. Hope was wearing a rueful smirk that looked more like a grimace than anything else. She seemed amused by the situation, yet almost disappointed. “I should go.” 

It was nothing like Hope Mikaelson, but it had _everything_ to do with quiet, little Hope Marshall. 

Josie hadn’t seen this girl in years—the girl that hid her true identity from the school to protect herself and her family, the girl who went under the name of Marshall because being a Mikaelson made her too much of a target. 

The death of Hope’s parents had hardened her and forced her to out herself as a tribrid, and then the arrival of Malivore monsters had all but turned her into a brick wall. 

But Hope Mikaelson’s parents had died when she was fourteen, and Hope Marshall in this world was clearly older than that. Josie tried to do the math in her head but her brain felt foggy. Did Malivore even exist in this world? God, she hoped not. 

“No. You will do no such thing,” Wilma spoke up, with a stern look at Hope. “ _You_ —“ 

She whirled around at Lizzie. “And _you_ , come with me, now.” 

And then Josie was alone, with only her thoughts for company. She took the time to look around the hospital wing, from the tiled flooring to the clean, empty beds around her. 

She had only been here a few times, and never for very long. Once, she had been caught in the middle of a fight between Jed’s pack and a few vampires, which got her a bloody nose and a trip to see Wilma. 

This place felt different at night. More lonely. Or maybe that was the fact that she had been left by herself. 

She didn’t know if she truly liked it, being left alone. She didn’t know if she had wanted them to actually leave, or if she just needed a moment to digest everything that had happened. 

A part of her still couldn’t even understand it. 

Should she tell someone? Should she admit that she didn’t belong here and that she wasn’t truly Josie Parker? She wanted to, but she had no way to predict how someone would react if she did. 

It would be easier if she just confessed, but another part of her knew that the idea was too dangerous to even think about. She would have to keep up this act of Josie Parker. 

She wasn’t sure she could, though. She had almost started crying several times and she hadn’t even been here for ten minutes, it seemed. How could she pretend everything was fine, when, in truth, she just wanted to scream her head off until she passed out again? 

Josie didn’t know how long she got lost in these types of thoughts, but it must have been a while, because the muted voices she heard out in the hall suddenly grew louder. 

“...We don’t know why...” 

“...Remember...?” 

“...I don’t know...” 

“...appreciate it, Hope, you can...” 

After a couple of minutes, the door to the hospital wing inched open before it closed again, as if someone had wanted to come in before thinking better of it. Josie held her breath and tried to listen for any more sounds or voices. 

“...You should...prepare yourselves...Wilma is saying she can’t remember some things...” 

Josie blinked, realizing that she recognized the voice. The person had a thick accent, but it was velvety-soft and kind. It was Ms. Tig. 

“We think it could be dissociative amnesia,” Ms. Tig continued. “I fear we don’t know the true extent of what she’s been through...” 

Josie leaned in closer and tried to hear the rest, but it suddenly felt like she was underwater. She bit her lip and waited. 

Her heart jumped into her throat at the next voice. She jolted forward with the force of it and stopped breathing. 

“Thank you, Emma,” a man said. Oh no. 

Dad. 

Josie swallowed hard and closed her eyes. How could she face her parents, who weren’t really her parents anymore? 

A darker thought came. Later, how would she be able to face Josie Parker’s parents? 

“Do you mind waiting on standby just in case we need you?” Josie’s dad asked. 

“Of course.” 

With a _swoosh_ , the door opened. First came in Nurse Wilma, then Headmaster Alaric Saltzman, and—

And Headmistress Caroline Salvatore. 

Josie’s mom looked exactly like how she had seen her last, but maybe that had something to do with her being a vampire. Her dad looked younger, too. Josie noticed that he no longer had the beard he had been growing in the other world. 

A sob formed in Josie’s throat. She had to clench her teeth together so she wouldn’t make a sound. Her dad looked young. He looked young...

_ Without me.  _

It felt like a punch in the stomach, seeing her parents like this, in a world where they didn’t recognize her as the person she wanted them to. She was waiting for them to run to her and hug her and make her feel better and tell her how much they loved her, but they did none of those things. 

Caroline only pulled a chair out next to her bedside table and smiled gently at her. Alaric stood at the foot of the bed, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes the same way Caroline’s did. 

Josie could only hope that she wouldn’t accidentally call them _Mom_ and _Dad_. For the first time, she was glad that Lizzie wasn’t here, and she immediately felt bad for thinking it. She just didn’t know if she could stomach all three of them in the same room at once. 

“Hi, Josie,” Alaric said. His words felt empty. Numb. “We’re glad to see that you’re alive.” 

Caroline nodded and leaned closer. “How are you feeling, sweetie? You really gave us quite a scare there.” 

Josie blinked. She stared at her mother and father, willing them to recognize their daughter. _I’m right here!_ She screamed in her mind. _Can’t you see me? Don’t you love me?_

She kept screaming, begging for them to listen, but her silent pleas went unheard. It was only when she opened her mouth, that they heard her. 

“I’m doing okay, M-Ms. Salvatore,” she stammered over her words. Fuck. She had almost called her _Mom_. 

“Good,” Alaric cut in, before Caroline could respond to that. Josie didn’t know why, but it hurt. Just a little. “We want to make sure something like this never happens again. We were hoping you could help us fill in the gaps...?” 

Josie looked away, feeling the tears coming again. He didn’t care, she realized. He didn’t care at all. He wasn’t here to see how she was doing, he was only here to find out what happened. 

“But first,” Caroline interrupted, giving Alaric a dirty look that Josie didn’t think she was supposed to see, “do you have any questions for us?” 

Yes. Of _course_ , she did. Josie had so many questions, but none that she could ask without looking absolutely fucking _crazy_. Instead, she shook her head and kept quiet. 

It must have confused them, her lack of curiosity, her lack of interest in what happened to her. Any other person might have asked thousands of questions until their throat felt scrubbed raw, but Josie couldn’t. 

She was afraid that she might expose herself, that she might do something stupid and reveal the fact that she didn’t belong here. She had already come too close to jumping into their arms when she first saw them. Had already come too close to breaking into tears the second she heard their voices. 

“Okay,” Alaric said slowly, and stepped forward. “Based on Hope’s version of what happened and the nurses’ report of your injuries, Caroline and I were able to loosely piece together what happened.” 

Wilma and Caroline nodded to agree. 

“What we haven’t been able to figure out,” the latter continued, “is whether or not this was an accident.” 

Josie tilted her head to the side and furrowed her eyebrows. What did _that_ mean? 

Surely, they weren’t saying that someone had pushed her into the lake or tried to kill her, right? Why would someone do that? Was Josie Parker hated by her classmates or something? 

“You think someone did this to me on purpose?” Josie asked, but all the adults stayed quiet. After a long moment, Caroline shook her head, slowly, like she was waiting for something. Alaric just frowned. Was he waiting for something, too? 

Only then did it dawn on her. 

“No,” the brunette murmured, as if it was more for herself than for them. She sat back against her bed pillows, stunned. “You think I tried to kill myself.” 

It wasn’t a question. 

Alaric and Caroline shared a meaningful, worried glance. Wilma gave a small gasp, but she tried hard to hide it. 

“Did you?” Alaric asked. 

Josie immediately opened her mouth to deny it, but the truth was, she didn’t know. 

Had _Josie Parker_ wanted to kill herself? Had that been her intention, in falling into the lake, had she planned to end her life? Was that how Josie Saltzman ended up here, surrounded by people she could barely look in the eye but people she couldn’t quite tear her gaze away from all the same? 

“I-I don’t know,” Josie admitted honestly. She blushed and held back a yawn, blinking quickly. She suddenly felt exhausted. She knew she shouldn’t have even been _thinking_ about sleeping, but her mind went there all the same. “I can’t remember.” 

“And that’s okay,” Caroline hurried to reassure her. “We want you to know that we’re here for you either way. Your health and safety comes first. If you don’t feel like talking to us, Miss Tig is just outside. Do you think you’d be more comfortable talking to her?” 

_Talking to Ms. Tig?_ That seemed like a fucking nightmare of its own. Josie wanted to shake her head, but she was scared that the action would come off as rude, so she said nothing at all. Another yawn bobbed against her throat. 

When Josie didn’t immediately respond, Caroline turned around and looked at Wilma. 

“Wilma, do you think we can move her to her room?” she asked. “I don’t know if I feel okay with her staying here. She might be able to sleep better if her surroundings are more familiar.” 

“I’m sorry,” Wilma apologized, “I think it would be better if we kept her overnight, just to monitor her. I’d like to make sure she doesn’t develop an infection or have any lasting brain damage.” 

“Is there any way you can monitor her from her room with magic?” Alaric spoke up, a fist underneath his chin. 

“We would rather not risk it, just in case a spell goes wrong,” Wilma told him. “Sometimes it’s best to do things without magic.” 

Josie kept looking between the three adults as they were talking. She could barely keep up with the three of them. After a little while, she just decided not to. 

As they all continued to talk about her as if she wasn’t in the same room or even from the same world, Josie’s eyes slowly began to close shut. Her body felt weak and broken. She was tired of trying not to cry and she was tired of thinking and feeling and _being_. Maybe it was because she had supposedly nearly drowned, or maybe it was the fact that she felt lost and overwhelmed by everything that had happened, but black dots quickly started to swarm her vision. She wanted to give into them, wanted to lose herself in the darkness, but she couldn’t. 

The door to the hospital wing suddenly opened, so quickly it slammed against the wall. Josie jolted up and tried to pretend as if she hadn’t been falling asleep, but that was a mistake. 

A dark-haired woman appeared in the doorway, another woman and a man by her side, both blonde and wearing identical expressions of worry. The dark-haired woman was at the front of the small group, eyes darting wildly across the room in search of...

In search of _Josie_. 

When she found her, her shoulders relaxed and she seemed to heave a big sigh of relief. 

The moment Josie met the woman’s eyes, she instantly recognized the ghost of Josette Laughlin, standing in front of her like she had never died in the first place. 

But this time, the woman was not a ghost at all. Her face was clear and full of color, and the life in her eyes seemed to brighten with love the second she saw Josie. 

The siphoner had been right earlier. There was no preparing herself for this. No preparing herself for seeing the unconditional love on this woman’s—her _mother’s_ —face. No preparing herself for the feeling bursting in her chest like _nostalgia_ and _grief_ and everything she had always been afraid of, but nothing she never secretly longed for. 

“Hi, baby,” Josette murmured softly, running forward to take Josie—her daughter—in her arms. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be here sooner. The coven meeting ran long and by the time I picked up the phone I had eleven missed calls.” 

Josie froze as the woman hugged her. It was exactly what she had wanted but exactly what she _hadn’t_ gotten from Caroline, from Alaric, but it was _more_. 

It was too much. 

Before Josie realized it, she was crying. Sobbing. Shaking. 

It made her headache worse, but the siphoner couldn’t find it in herself to care, and not about the fact that she was crying in front of other people either. She could only focus on the person stroking her back, whispering comforting words into her ear, and the feelings that tore at her and inside her, threatening to break her apart. 

Somehow, it made her feel a lot better, to let everything out. She hadn’t planned to lean into the embrace, hadn’t planned to even _seek_ it out, but she was hugging her mom, and her mom was hugging her _back_ , and just maybe everything would be okay.

And so, Josie collapsed and folded into the arms of a woman she had only met once, had never truly talked to, had barely knew anything about and had only ever heard stories of. 

As the minutes passed, Josie’s sobs grew smaller and quieter, into sniffles and whimpers, and her body stopped shuddering and went still. 

Falling asleep was quicker and easier than crying. 

—

When Josie woke up again, she was no longer wearing a dress, but a hospital gown. The material chafed uncomfortably against her skin and when she tried to open her eyes, it was so bright she was forced to close them again. 

For a second, in her sleep-fogged and post-cry state, she forgot all about what had happened. About the Merge. About Lizzie. About Josie Parker and Hope Marshall. 

The backs of her eyelids were warm with reds and yellows and oranges, so she could only assume it was morning. She yawned and sunk into her bed sheets, intent on knocking right back out into dreamland. 

“...No. She’s not awake, yet.” Wilma’s voice came from somewhere in the room, but Josie didn’t bother to check. She just wanted to go back to sleep, and that was what she planned to do when she turned over and adjusted her head on her pillow. “You should go back to your room, Hope.” 

Josie’s blood ran cold. She went rigid at the name and sucked in a breath. In truth, she was a second away from shooting up off the bed and looking over, but she forced her body to stay still. Forced her breathing to calm down, forced her racing heart to quiet, knowing that Hope might be able to hear it. She still wasn’t sure if the other girl was a tribrid or not. 

“It’s still early,” Wilma continued, “you might be able to catch a few more hours of sleep before breakfast.” 

“ _Sleep_?” Hope let out a laugh like a scoff. She sounded...angry. Her voice came out in a hissed whisper through gritted teeth. “How can anyone even _think_ about sleeping right now? Don’t you understand? I—“ 

She paused. Josie’s mind swarmed in the space between. She had never heard Hope sound this upset, this panicked, this _desperate_ , before. Not as Hope Marshall, and definitely not as Hope Mikaelson. 

She just wasn’t making any sense. Or maybe she _was_ , and maybe Josie was the only one that thought so. 

“I _can’t_ ,” Hope finished. “Not until I know if she...” 

She lowered her voice, and Josie didn’t hear the rest of it. She got the feeling that she wasn’t supposed to be listening in, so she kept her eyes closed and pretended to be sleeping. After a few seconds, she could hear Wilma’s voice. 

“Amnesia like this after traumatic events is not unusual,” the nurse told Hope. “Like I said before, we hope it’ll be temporary.” 

“You _hope_? So you’re not even sure?” Hope growled out. “That’s...” 

There was another pause as she tried to find the right words. The silence dragged on for so long that Josie almost wanted to break it herself.

“That’s just not good enough,” Hope said, at last. If Josie didn’t know any better, she would have thought that the other girl sounded guilty, but she _did_ know better, and that couldn’t be possible. “You really don’t understand. I need to know if she’s going to remember—“ 

Hope cut herself off and sighed. Josie’s chest grew tight. “Nevermind.” 

“Did something happen, Hope?” Wilma asked, after another beat of silence. She sounded so concerned that Josie wondered about their relationship. It seemed that Wilma and Hope were much closer than Josie originally thought, especially since the nurse kept using Hope’s first name. 

Was it possible that Wilma knew Hope was a Mikaelson? Josie tried to remember if other teachers and staff members had known about Hope’s family in her old world, but she couldn’t. 

“No,” Hope told the nurse, but she didn’t sound so sure. Josie clenched her eyes shut to resist the urge to steal a glance at the expression on Hope’s face. If she had, she would have seen that Hope looked absolutely miserable. 

“No,” the other girl repeated, as if to convince herself. “It’s fine. Can you just—can you do something for me?”

Wilma must have nodded, because Hope went on. 

“Don’t tell her I was here,” she said, in a voice like smoke. Josie’s skin tingled, and she could have sworn she felt Hope’s eyes burning on her in that moment. 

“Are you sure?” Wilma asked, sounding reluctant. “Miss Parker would be very flattered to hear that you visited her.” 

Footsteps. Hope must have been walking towards the door. 

“No, she wouldn’t,” she muttered, so bitterly that it surprised Josie. 

Her heart skipped a beat. 

“When she remembers, she’ll hate me.” 

The door closed shut behind her. 


	3. Chapter 3

When Josie finally woke up the next day, she was sure that the conversation she had overheard between Hope and Wilma had been just a dream. 

Or a nightmare. The implications of what she had been eavesdropping on continued to haunt her. Did Hope Marshall not want her to remember what had happened because _she_ was the reason Josie had almost drowned? Had Hope even been the one to push her into the lake? 

She didn’t want to believe it, and she wouldn’t. Hope might have been both a tribrid and a Mikaelson, but she had never been a monster. 

“Good afternoon, Miss Parker,” Wilma greeted, shortly after Josie woke up. The siphoner stretched her arms out above her head and smiled through a yawn. She was no longer hooked to an IV. “I hope you’re feeling much better. Your mom and your sister left to go get you lunch, but they’ll be back soon. Is there anything I can do for you until they’re here?” 

Josie _did_ feel much better. Her head was barely pounding anymore and she could breathe without feeling the urge to cry. Her throat was still a little dry, though. 

“No, thank you,” she murmured softly, looking around. There was a paper cup of water on her bedside table, and she took the chance to sip from it, her eyes still sweeping the room. 

The hospital wing looked much brighter and less cold, now that it was the middle of the afternoon. While the infirmary beds next to Josie’s were still clean and empty, her own was not. 

There were _dozens_ of vases of flowers around her, with small envelopes and notecards tucked inside them. There were also some boxes of chocolates and other sweets, and Josie could make out a stuffed animal sitting at the foot of her bed. 

It was a wolf. It reminded her a little bit of Hope. For some reason, it made Josie smile—

And then she frowned as she remembered what Hope had said. Maybe she would never be able to get it out of her head. 

“Actually, can you tell me something?” Josie spoke up, causing Wilma to look over at her. She had meant to ask about Hope, but when the nurse’s eyes met hers, she lost her nerve. 

Instead, she asked, “What’s with all the flowers and gifts?” 

Wilma raised her eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised.” 

Josie tilted her head to the side curiously. If she was being honest, she actually _had_ been surprised to see all the presents left for her. Last year, she had been sick with the flu for what seemed like forever, and not a single person had given her a bouquet of flowers or even a get-well-soon card other than...

Other than Hope. 

“You’re a popular girl, Miss Parker,” Wilma told her with a shrug. “It’s only normal that your classmates would want to visit you when you’re not feeling well.” 

_ Not feeling well.  _

That was a nice way of saying that she had almost drowned. 

It made Josie feel a bit like she was overreacting, or even going crazy. Was she still asleep? Still dreaming? Had Josie Parker even been anywhere _near_ the lake last night?

“Okay, so Mom seems to think you’re in a soup mood, but personally, I get the feeling that a healthy, kale salad would make you feel better...” 

Lizzie’s voice came from the doorway. Josie shook her head to clear her thoughts, and forced herself back to the present.

“No one wants to eat a cold salad when they’re sick, honey.” Josette Laughlin—Parker, Josie corrected herself—walked in right after her daughter. She smiled at Josie and offered up the steaming bowl in front of her with both hands. “Veggie noodle soup?” 

Silence. 

Josie froze. 

She panicked as she realized that they were waiting for her to speak, but she couldn’t form a word. Her lungs burned and her throat ached. This didn’t feel right, or maybe this felt _so_ right that it made Josie absolutely sick to her own stomach. 

It wasn’t right because Caroline, her mom, her _real_ mom, wasn’t here giving her soup, veggie noodle soup, her favorite, and it was so, so fucking _wrong_ because Lizzie Parker was here, but Lizzie Saltzman was dead, and Josie killed her sister, and they merged, and—

“Josie?” The woman frowned. “Are you okay?” 

Josie gave a jerky nod of her head. “No, no, it’s nothing,” she said quickly, trying to show that she was fine. But it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Inside, she was shaking. Trembling. Stuck between getting lost in her unforgiving memories and struggling to remember them. 

It must have shown on her face. 

Her mother and her sister shared a worried look, obviously not convinced by her words. A frown tugged at both of their mouths. They looked disappointed. 

Maybe they had thought that Josie would be back to herself by the morning. Maybe they had thought that her memories would have come back with her. 

“Are you sure?” Josette asked. Josie learned that she had a hard time calling her _Mom_ in her head, so she just tried stopping to, even though she knew she should probably get used to it. 

“Yeah.” She forced a smile on her face, wanting to reassure them. “Just lost in my thoughts.” 

Their frowns deepened. Josie panicked. “I think I’m starting to remember more,” she added. _Lied_. 

Almost instantly, Josette and Lizzie’s faces broke out into grins. Josie nearly sighed in relief out loud, but she felt guilty, too. It washed over her in waves, and she had to look away to hold out against the nausea that came with it. 

Bile rose in her throat. 

“That’s great!” Josette told her. “I knew you would, I’m so proud of you. In fact, your sister and I were just talking about that. She can tell you herself that I never doubted it for a second.” 

Smile dropping slightly, she added, “I would actually like to talk to _you_ about what happened later if it’s okay, but first you need to eat.” 

Josie gulped and tried hard not to look away again, afraid it might show how much she was lying. She had no idea why she had told them that she was starting to remember. Honestly, she just didn’t want to see the frowns on their faces anymore. 

“I’m not really feeling all that hungry,” she mumbled, playing with her hands on her lap. There was dirt under her nails. It made her skin crawl. Made her stomach churn. 

“You should listen to your mother, dear,” Nurse Wilma spoke up. When no one was looking, Josie secretly sent her a glare. “The faster you work up an appetite, the faster you can get out of here.” 

Lizzie nodded to agree and arched an eyebrow, a small smirk on her face. She raised the plate in her hand for Josie to see. “So, salad?” 

Josie smiled shyly and shook her head. She couldn’t help but think that this felt familiar. _Nice_. So why did her chest hurt so much? 

“Soup, please.” 

Josette grinned and moved so that she could sit down next to Josie, holding the bowl under her chin as if she was a baby. It should have infuriated Josie, being treated like a child, but she could only feel safe and warm. 

It had been a while since she had someone to take care of her like this, and damn it, if she wasn’t going to take full advantage. A part of her knew she didn’t deserve to be taken care of after all she had done, but she couldn’t help herself either way. Maybe, if she didn’t say anything, she could pretend that this was normal and that another part of her wasn’t absolutely dying inside. That was why she shoved a spoonful of hot soup down her throat, even though she wasn’t hungry and it burned the roof of her mouth. 

For the next few minutes, she ate in relative silence. Josette stroked her hair and tried to force-feed her. Lizzie attempted to make herself comfortable in the bedside chair. Sometime after, the blonde began to root through Josie’s gifts.

Josie watched her with a pout, taking note of all the sweets and chocolates that Lizzie was blatantly stealing from her. She half-expected her sister to start eating the flowers, too. 

Thirty minutes later, Milton Greasley came into the hospital wing with about ten balloons and a large smile on his face. The balloons screeched against the ceiling, and Josie watched with amusement as the boy tried to pull them out from where they had gotten stuck in the doorway. 

It took about a hundred tugs and a little bit of super strength, but he managed it. For no reason whatsoever. He abandoned the balloons in all of a second when he caught sight of Josie watching him.

“Josie!” he squeaked, and the siphoner barely had time to wipe the dribble of soup falling down her chin before he threw himself across the room in a flash of super speed and hugged her. 

Well, at least MG was still a vampire. 

“How are you?” He squeezed her so tight Josie could barely breathe. She found that she liked it, so she held him back just as tightly, even if he wasn’t really her best friend, even if this boy was all but a stranger to her. 

“Good. You?” she wheezed out. MG noticed that she was out of breath and released her. 

“Sorry.” He blushed darkly. It brought a smile to Josie’s face. She thought she would never be able to see him blush again. “But I’m doing better now that I know you’re okay. I came earlier but you were sleeping. Lizzie texted me a few minutes ago and said I could help her and your mom walk you back to your room.” 

Well. This MG clearly had a crush on Lizzie Parker like the other one had on Lizzie Saltzman. It made the siphoner wonder for a second if he was just helping out to score points with the blonde, even though she knew it was silly.

“Oh.” Josie looked down at her lap. “I don’t want to be a burden if you have something better to do...?” 

She trailed off and slowly brought her gaze back up to MG’s own, but he looked confused. Out of the corner of her eye, Josie could see her bio-mom talking to the nurse. 

“Something better to do than hang out with my best friend?” MG knitted his eyebrows together. “Are you serious? Of course I want to be here for you, Jo. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” 

“Are you sure?” Josie asked. Just when MG opened his mouth, Lizzie beat him there. 

“Come _on_ ,” the blonde whined, dragging it out. She stood up from her chair and pulled the lollipop she had been sucking on out of her mouth. “Don’t be stupid, sis. We need him to carry all the gifts you got.” 

She bent over and grabbed the stuffed animal that had been left at the foot of Josie’s bed. 

“Look.” She held the toy up and pouted. “Jed bought you a stuffed wolf. Isn’t that so sweet of him?” 

Oh. 

_Jed_. 

That was who had gotten the stuffed animal for her. Josie had been hoping it was someone else. 

“Um, I guess...?” she said slowly, narrowing her eyes. Why would Jed do that? And why did Lizzie even care that he did? She never had about the alpha before. 

“Whatever.” Lizzie threw the stuffed animal carelessly back onto the bed. She then placed her hands on her hips and looked around. “We should get going.” 

Josie moved to sit up, but a throbbing pain at the back of her skull stopped her. She brought her hands up to her head and winced. Damn it. She forgot that she had almost drowned. The headache was a painful reminder. 

“Lizzie, honey, give your sister some time.” Josette suddenly appeared by her side, and now Wilma was here, too. “We’re not in any rush. We have the whole weekend together, remember?” 

Josie swallowed hard at the thought of havingto keep this pretense up for an entire weekend. She barely thought she could survive the next five minutes. God. Would she be stuck here forever? 

(A dark part of her that remembered the Merge hoped she would.) 

“I’m not rushing her,” Lizzie argued. “I’m simply suggesting that we should all should hurry up. I’m sick of this place.”

“ _You’re_ sick of it?” Josie raised her eyebrows, sharing a secret smile with her mother. 

Lizzie seemed not to notice. She grabbed a night bag that was sitting on the floor and pulled some clothes out of it. Before long, Josie was changing out of her hospital gown and into a cropped shirt and some shorts. 

The shorts were impossibly higher than her thighs, the material was thin, and Josie didn’t feel very comfortable in them. She thought that they must have been Lizzie’s, but she didn’t ask. 

After her mom and Wilma exchanged some words and Josie quietly thanked the nurse, they were on their way. The halls of the school were empty for the most part, but there were still a few students that went up to Josie and asked her how she was doing. 

She didn’t recognize many of these people, and those that she did, she had hardly ever talked to them before. It was obvious that Josie Parker had a lot more friends than Josie Saltzman, and the siphoner tried not to be bitter about that.

She just smiled through a lie until her classmates were satisfied and left. It didn’t take long to get to her dorm room, and Josie found herself stopping and reaching out for the door handle on instinct right before they passed it. 

“What are you doing?” Lizzie asked, a few feet away in front. She didn’t realize that Josie had stopped walking until now. “That’s not your room.” 

Josie froze. She moved her hand away from the door as if burned. “It’s...not?” 

The blonde raised an eyebrow. Josette looked concerned, but Josie was beginning to learn that she always looked that way when it had anything to do with her daughter. 

“No,” Lizzie said slowly, too slowly. “That’s mine. Your room is at the end of the hall.” 

Josie flickered her eyes to the end of the hall and then back. Her mouth moved on its own and she stammered out, “I, um, I thought we shared a room?”

She instantly regretted it. It showed that she had lied earlier about remembering more, and worse, it proved that her plan to fake having her memories back was in vain. 

MG frowned. He had been since Josie stopped and tried to enter the wrong room. “What? You mean you don’t remember?” 

“Temporary amnesia,” Lizzie explained with a careless wave of her hand. 

“Ah,” he murmured, but it was clear he had more questions. He did not ask them. 

“And—“ Lizzie turned back to Josie. “—Not anymore. We stopped sharing years ago because you thought some space away from each other would make us less codependent.” 

_Me_? 

Josie couldn’t believe that at all. Back in her own world, she had always put her sister’s needs above her own. During parties, school, _anything_ , she always made sure Lizzie was happy and having fun. Taking care of her all the time became second nature, and somewhere along the way she just stopped taking care of herself. 

Now, she had a hard time imagining a time or place where _she_ would be the one asking for space, asking for room, and not the other way around. 

“Oh,” the siphoner breathed out, feeling numb. It felt like none of this had truly happened yet, and she was waiting for it to all come crashing down. 

“Wait.” Josie paused. “Who’s my roommate, then?”

MG and Lizzie started laughing like that was the funniest thing in the world. Josette rolled her eyes, but she had a small smile on her lips, too.

“Alyssa Chang,” MG managed through his fit of laughter, about a solid minute later. Josie felt her heart drop to the bottom of her stomach. 

_ Please be joking. _

Lizzie must have caught the look on her face, because she stopped laughing herself. MG only laughed harder. 

“Sorry, sis.” The blonde shrugged. “No one else would room with her so you volunteered. You never told us why.” 

Josie closed her mouth and pouted as the small group continued to walk towards the end of the hall. 

She didn’t know why Josie Parker would do that herself. Alyssa Chang had been an absolute nightmare in the entire decade Josie has known her for. The witch had even tried to kill her back in the prison world, and Josie didn’t know how she felt about being roommates with her. 

She didn’t know how she felt about her _room_ , either. The second Lizzie opened the door for her, she had to bite her lip to stop herself from gasping out loud. 

She could barely recognize her own room. Most things were painfully different. Her bed was no longer on the right side of the room, but the pillows and sheets were still the same. The plants she had started growing a few years ago were gone, as well as the supplies she would use to take care of them. Instead, there was a pale-pink sewing machine and a wooden desk in the corner on her side of the room, with a plain dresser and a closet next to it. 

For some reason, there were Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling, even though they were well into March. Each light dangled a polaroid picture, none of which Josie could remember taking. Above her bed was a framed watercolor painting of a cactus—what the fuck?—and the letter J formed into a weird type of dreamcatcher. At least it looked pretty. 

The only difference Josie truly liked was the large, fluffy blanket folded on top of her bed. She had never seen it before, but she couldn’t wait to wrap herself inside of it and go to sleep. 

A familiar screech interrupted Josie from her thoughts, and she turned around to see MG struggling to pull the balloons inside again. She rolled her eyes but couldn’t quite keep the smile off of her face, since it was such an MG thing for the boy to do. It was almost like nothing had changed. 

“Thank you for all of your help, MG,” Josette told the boy, after he finished bringing in all the flowers and gifts. “I really appreciate it. Would you mind leaving us girls alone for a few minutes?”

MG’s smile faltered for just a second, before he nodded and tried to pretend that he wasn’t disappointed. “You got it, Miss P.” He walked backwards to the door, but not before waving at Lizzie and Josie. His eyes lingered on the blonde. “Bye, Jo. Bye, Lizzie. I’ll see you guys at dinner...?”

He trailed the question off hopefully, and Josie decided to spare him. “Of course,” she said. Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, but she tried. “Thank you so much, MG.” 

He grinned, told her that he hoped she felt better soon, and bumped into a balloon on his way out, which had Lizzie snickering. Josette ignored it and helped Josie to her bed, as if she hadn’t been able to walk just fine a few minutes ago. 

“Is your head still hurting?” she asked, rubbingsoothing circles into her daughter’s back. Josie found out that the fluffy blanket she had been eyeing earlier was just as warm and comfortable as she thought it would be.

“Just a little,” the brunette admitted honestly. There was no point in lying about it. “It’s not bad, though.” 

“You don’t need to downplay your pain, Josie,” Lizzie cut in. “It’s just us here.” 

“I’m not,” Josie swore, even though her limbs were a little sore and her lungs were aching from just the simple walk over here. She felt winded. Breathless. “I promise.” 

“Okay.” Lizzie reached behind her and patted down the pillow behind her head, while Josette made sure her blanket was covering every part of her from the waist down. “Can I get you anything?” 

“Water?” Josette offered. 

“Aspirin?” Lizzie continued. 

The words gave Josie a weird sense of deja vu. She half-expected Hope to walk in any minute now, to ask her if it was okay with the siphoner if she came back to school, to tell her that she missed her, but she didn’t.

“No, but you can sit down,” she repeated her words from the past. They made her feel like everything around her wasn’t crumbling in on itself. Like the walls wouldn’t collapse on her if she took her eyes off of them for a split-second. 

“Alright.” They both listened and sat down. After a few moments, Josette asked, very gently, “Do you mind if we talk for a little?” 

Josie wanted to say _yes_ , that she _did_ mind, and that she _didn’t_ feel up for a talk, but she found herself nervously shaking her head. Josette noticed.

“You’re not in any trouble, honey. I’m just curious.” The woman laughed to herself, like she found it funny. She grabbed Josie’s hand before asking, “Why were you at the lake when you were supposed to be at the party?” 

“I don’t know,” Josie answered truthfully. It was a mistake. 

Her mother and her sister’s faces fell. They probably thought that she was having a hard time with her memories again. 

“I guess I just needed some fresh air,” she lied. In truth, she had no idea why Josie Parker was at the lake. 

“That makes sense,” Lizzie added, nodding. She looked to her mom and explained. “Even without all the wolves there, it was still really crowded. MG kept following me around the whole time. It’s _really_ hard to ditch a vampire, no offense.” 

“Without the wolves?” Josie asked. 

“The full moon, _duh_ ,” the blonde told her, like it was obvious. Josie had no idea what she was talking about. “You were really upset at me that Jed couldn’t come. We fought about changing the date like five times.” 

Huh. Why would Josie be upset that Jed couldn’t come to their party? 

“Wait.” Josie frowned. It looked more like a pout than anything else. “Why would we have a party on a day when a third of the school couldn’t show up?”

“And have it on a day that’s not our birthday?” Lizzie returned easily. “Are you crazy?” 

“Lizzie,” Josette scolded. “Let’s focus on what matters.”

She turned back to Josie. 

“Wilma let me examine you while you were sleeping and we agreed that all of your lab work looked good,” she said. “We just need to figure out why you’re having a hard time remembering things. Amnesia like this usually improves after a few days, so I don’t think we should worry just yet. I was planning on calling Doctor Gilbert to come and take a look at you, just to get a second opinion.” 

Dr. Gilbert? As in, _Elena_? No. Josie didn’t need to bother her aunt like that. Her aunt that was no longer her aunt. She tried to separate herself from the things she knew and the things she didn’t, but it just made her head hurt.

“Or I can take you back to the hospital and we can do some more scans?” Josette continued. The words no longer made sense. Josie watched the woman’s mouth move but she couldn’t hear anything that was coming out of it. She couldn’t keep up. She would never be able to. “I do want to start up your sessions with Emma again for sure, though. What do you think?” 

It was too much. Too much of a reminder that the life she knew was gone. This woman was her mom and Caroline couldn’t care less, _Alaric_ couldn’t care less. She wouldn’t be able to tell them that she needed them, she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone that she would _never_ get her memories back because they didn’t belong to her. They never had.

“Josie?” 

Fuck. Her head pounded and the inside of her nose stung. Heat clawed at her stomach. Her throat closed up. Damn it. She was about to cry. No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t cry again. Not again. _Please_. Not again. 

“I think,” Josie started. On the inside, she was gasping, begging for air. She felt like she was on the verge of a panic attack. “I think I’d like to be alone right now.”

“But—“ Lizzie tried to complain, but her mother cut her off. 

“We understand,” she said, moving to stand up from the bed. Josie missed the look she gave Lizzie. She was too busy staring down at her lap and trying to force her aching lungs to pull in air. 

“We’re just a phone call away, okay, honey?” Josette patted her hand. Josie didn’t want to look up. She was afraid the woman might be able to see the tears in her eyes. “We love you so much.”

“Yeah, Jo,” Lizzie put in. “We’ll always be here for you. You don’t have to be alone. When you want to talk, just let us know, okay?” 

When they hugged her goodbye, trying not to cry was harder than before. She felt embarrassed. 

Why couldn’t she handle this? Why couldn’t she get a hold on her emotions? It was so easy for other people. Why was she any different? 

_Why_ —

Why had she told them that she wanted to be alone? 

She didn’t. She _didn’t_. She wanted to be crowded with people, she wanted to see them all around her, she wanted to be constantly reminded that they were all alive and breathing, alive and breathing with _her_. She didn’t want them to go, not really. She wanted to feel them close, close enough to touch, close enough that she could feel them just beneath her skin. She needed them here. She _needed_ them. 

She had asked them to leave, so why did it hurt so much when they actually did? Damn it. What if they thought that she hated them? 

Josie didn’t know. The only thing she could do was overthink and cry. She buried her face into her pillow— _God_ , it smelled _exactly_ like her shampoo—and cried harder. About what had happened, about what was happening now, about what would happen later. 

She felt scared and helpless. She would never be able to tell anyone, and even if she did, who the hell would believe her? She wouldn’t even believe _herself_. 

Slowly, after a long enough time that her sobs turned into shudders, Josie began to calm down. 

Alone, she found that she could breathe much more easily. She didn’t have to face her sister, or her mother who wasn’t really her mother, and not her roommate either. At least, for the time being. 

Her pillow was damp with tears and snot, and the space behind her eyes throbbed, but she was done crying. Done with crying over her own memories that didn’t matter and over someone else’s memories that she would never be able to remember herself. 

She could worry about that later. For now, she needed to handle _this_. She needed to find a way to survive without breaking down every two seconds. 

Most of all, she needed to find out everything she could about Josie Parker. And the best way to do that was by going through her stuff. 

The first thing the siphoner did was check the gifts her classmates had left for her. She moved them all to her desk and sat in front of it, a pencil and paper in hand. She went straight for the sweets, and then moved onto the flowers. 

Three people named Jessica, Alex, and Claire had bought her a box of chocolates, and she made a note for herself to thank them later. Someone who didn’t sign their name got her a bag of lollipops. She stuck a lemon one into her mouth as she continued to work. 

Most of the people who had gotten her flowers hadn’t bothered to leave more than their names, but a few did. Some she even recognized. 

** Hi, Jo, **

** I’m sorry about what happened. My mom said she’s gonna make you a cake, but I don’t think I was supposed to tell you that. Just act surprised when I give it to you. Hope you feel better soon.  **

** Hugs,  **

** Pedro **

Josie smiled as she folded the card back up and tucked it into her desk. He had gotten her sunflowers. Sometimes Pedro was too cute for his own good. She made another note on her paper to find him as soon as possible. 

** Dear Jo, **

** Miss you lots already! Wishing you a speedy recovery. You got it, girl!  **

** Mandi and Sam **

This time, the flowers were tulips. Josie didn’t recognize the names so she swept the card to the side and moved on. 

** Glad you’re not dead or whatever. You still haven’t given me back the pencil I let you borrow last week. If it’s not on my desk by Monday morning I’m reporting you to the headmaster.  **

** Don’t forget,  **

** Alyssa Chang. **

A single blood-red rose. Josie rolled her eyes and tossed the note into the trash. She wrote down Alyssa’s name on her paper before crossing it out. As she set her pencil back down on the desk, she wondered if it was the other girl’s.

** Hey, girl, I already know you’ll pull through so I won’t start with any of that feel better soon crap. Just know that I’m here for you if you need someone to talk to.  **

** Kaleb.  **

White daisies and pretty, pink carnations. Josie grinned as she tucked his note into her desk and wrote his name down. 

Next, she grabbed the stuffed wolf she had seen earlier and removed the tag attached to its collar. It said: Jed. She flipped it around and read the writing on the back. 

** Hey, babe. I hope you’re okay. If you need anything, let me know. I ordered the pack to listen to whatever you say. A lot of us are still recovering from last night, but I’ll try to come and see you tomorrow again. Sorry I missed your party, princess, but I’ll make up for it, I promise.  **

_Babe_? And who was he calling _princess_? 

Oh no. 

Josie felt dread form a pit in her stomach. She couldn’t help but recall Lizzie bringing up Jed twice in the past few hours. Why would she do that? 

Unless...

Oh. No. Were she and Jed dating? 

No. They were probably just good friends. Yeah. _Good friends,_ Josie convinced herself. He was just being affectionate. Nicknames were a thing, and Josie had lots of them. 

The brunette set the wolf on top of her desk and resisted the urge to throw it in the trash like she had done Alyssa’s card. She cursed herself in her head.

To think that she had been hoping that Hope had bought the stuffed wolf for her. She was so stupid. 

Sighing, Josie stood up from the desk and looked around. Going through her gifts had not given her the insight she had wanted into Josie Parker’s life.

She needed _more_. 

The brunette sighed and almost gave up before something caught her eye. 

There was a black phone sitting on top of her nightstand. The screen was cracked. 

Josie walked over to it and picked it up. She weighed it over in her hands, sure that it was broken, but then the screen lit up. The siphoner figured that it had to be Josie Parker’s phone. That was the excuse she would use later, when she opened it up and typed in her passcode. 

It worked first try. 

Josie opened up her text messages and saw that she had fourteen new notifications, or rather, Josie Parker did.

She scrolled through her conversations and clicked on the most recent one. Her heart jumped into her throat when she realized that it was with Hope. 

She raised her head up and looked around, as if afraid to get caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. It was silent in the room, except for the air conditioning vent. It blew cold air right above her. Josie shivered. The siphoner then looked back down. 

Three messages had been sent from Josie Parker. Hope Marshall had read them all, but she hadn’t answered a single one. 

** [9:24] To Hope: I won’t tell anyone, I swear. Can we just talk?  **

** [9:27] To Hope: I’ll be waiting for you by the lake.  **

** [9:30] To Hope: Please come back.  **

Then—

** [10:03] From Lizzie: Where are you? **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m sorry if this chapter was boring :(


	4. Chapter 4

Josie re-read the text messages at least five more times before she moved on. Her mind both blanked and went into overdrive. 

What did the texts _mean_? Had Josie Parker been at the lake before she texted Hope or after? And just _what_ did Josie Parker promise to not tell anyone?

Josie found herself disappointed to see that she and Hope didn’t have any other messages together, and opened her conversation with Lizzie again. 

Most of her texts with her sister were requests to meet up and plans to hang out. There were also a few pictures of party decorations sent by Lizzie, asking Josie to choose which ones she liked better. 

** [2:37] From Lizzie: Rose gold or pink napkins?  **

** [2:43] To Lizzie: What? **

** [2:43] To Lizzie: Where are you?  **

** [2:43] From Lizzie: Party City. Now answer the damn question.  **

** [2:47] To Lizzie: How?  **

** [2:47] To Lizzie: Why aren’t you in class?  **

** [2:47] To Lizzie: School isn’t over.  **

** [2:48] From Lizzie: ? **

** [2:50] To Lizzie: Fine.  **

** [2:50] To Lizzie: Pink.  **

She had a message sent to Alyssa Chang asking to bring her brownies back from the kitchen, but Alyssa had left her on read. 

Curious, she continued scrolling and opened up her conversation with Jed. Her last text was sent from a few days ago.

** [4:07] To Jed: AC will be here in five. Come over.  **

** [4:07] From Jed: Coming.  **

** [4:08] From Jed: What should I wear?  **

** [4:08] To Jed: The blue and white striped sweater. She couldn’t keep her eyes off you the last time you wore it.  **

** [4:08] From Jed: Thanks.  **

Josie frowned. Who was AC? If the letters were initials, the only person it could have stood for was Alyssa Chang. But that didn’t make sense. And Josie couldn’t remember a time Jed had ever cared about his clothes either. 

She closed off the app and decided to go through her photo album next. Most of her recent photos were screenshots of homework assignments and notes, but she had one that was taken just last night. 

It was a picture of her and Lizzie in their pink and blue dresses. Josie couldn’t remember ever posing for the picture or smiling for the camera. She almost couldn’t recognize herself. Her eyes looked bright in the flash of the camera, her pink lip gloss shining just the same. 

Josie Parker looked... _happy_. 

Not for the first time, the brunette wondered if the two of them had switched places. If Josie Saltzman, by waking up in a world where her sister was alive, had forced Josie Parker to wake up in one where her sister was dead. 

The thought left a bad taste in her mouth. Almost—

Almost like lake water. 

She swallowed hard and set the phone down, unable to bear seeing more. Her throat burned. 

She felt like an impostor. She felt _dirty_. Her skin itched. Her clothes stuck to her uncomfortably. Every inch of her felt scrubbed raw with memories. She couldn’t unclench her teeth without fear of crying or forgetting them. 

Her hands shook. 

Before she knew it, she was in the bathroom. She ran her fingers underneath the faucet and forced them to stay still, but it only made the trembling worse. The water was too hot but too cold and not enough but too _much_. 

She glanced up from the faucet and her eyes met her reflection. She looked like shit. Plain and simple. There were dark circles and smeared mascara under her puffy, bloodshot eyes. Small, shallow cuts covered her face, like she had tripped head-first into a bush or something. 

Her hair was tangled and frizzy, but running her fingers through it did nothing to help fix the mess. After a few seconds, she gave up trying and decided that she just needed a shower. 

She shut the bathroom door, locked it, and slowly began to undress. _Slowly_ , because her limbs were still sore and it had been a long time since she last remembered showering.

One foot after the other, she stepped into the shower and left her clothes behind on the floor. There was a dark bruise on her hip that she hadn’t seen before, and the hot water of the shower made the tiny cuts all over her body sting. She turned the faucet to cold and decided that she would just have to get used to it. 

When she moved her hair to the front of her chest to start washing it, she let out a hiss of pain without meaning to. Just below her neck, her fingers had accidentally brushed up against a sensitive spot on her back. She hadn’t felt the pain before, but now it couldn’t seem to stop hurting.

Slowly, she raised her hand back to the spot and ghosted her fingers over the edges of it. She immediately cursed at the first sting of pain and pulled her hand back. 

Damn it. 

That _hurt_. 

Josie thought that the pain must have either come from a nasty bruise or a bad cut. She resolved to just finish up her shower as soon as possible and check it out after. 

An hour later had her standing in front of the bathroom mirror once again, twisting her head at an odd angle to try and see the thing on her back that was causing her pain. It took a few seconds, but she was finally able to. 

Josie gasped once she saw it. It looked like she had been attacked by an animal. 

Four, jagged gashes in the shape of claws ran down from her nape to her shoulder blades. The shower had cleaned most of the mess up, but dried, hardened blood was still cracked and caked into the cuts. The skin around it was angry-pink and warm to the touch, and Josie stood staring at her back for a solid minute. 

When her neck started to hurt from the weird angle, she turned around and wrapped a towel around herself. There weren’t any of the white robes she usually used after her showers. 

The towel was pink. The material of it scraped against the cuts on her back and she inhaled sharply. 

Though she hadn’t been able to feel them or even _think_ about them before, now they were the only thing she could. Had Josie Parker been attacked out by the lake? The cuts didn’t resemble anything human or normal, so she assumed that it must have been an animal. 

But what kind of animal? A bear? A _wolf_ —

No. Josie wouldn’t go there. She would go anywhere but there. Maybe she hadn’t even _been_ attacked. That was possible. More than possible. More than anything. 

It was the only option. 

Josie was startled out of her thoughts by the sound of a phone ringing. She dumbly waited a couple of seconds for someone to pick it up before she realized that it was Josie Parker’s phone.

Still wrapped in nothing but a towel, she threw open the bathroom door and hurried over to her nightstand. The person on the other line of the phone call was Lizzie. 

“Hey,” the blonde said. “I know you wanted to be left alone but it’s been a couple of hours, and you haven’t answered any of my texts or Mom’s. We got worried.”

“I was in the shower.” Josie cringed at the sound of her voice. It was beyond raspy and hoarse. Not the good kind, either. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lizzie told her. “Mom wants to have dinner in the hall with all of us in an hour. Aunt Liv and Uncle Luke will be there, too.” 

Josie’s breath hitched. It was silent for a few seconds before Lizzie spoke again. 

“Do you feel up for that?” she asked hesitantly, but Josie knew Lizzie wanted her to go. “If not, I can just say Chang is holding you hostage or something...” 

“No, no,” Josie said quickly, a bit too quickly. She tried to sound as excited as she could through the phone. “That sounds like fun.” 

“Great!” The brunette almost dropped the phone from her ear. “I’ll drop by your room at eight so we can go together.” 

“Okay.” Josie swallowed hard. She glanced down to the time and saw it was seven. “See you then.” 

Not long after she hung up and set the phone down, the door to her room opened. Alyssa Chang walked inside. 

Josie squeaked and almost dropped her hold on the towel wrapped around her. If Alyssa cared that she was practically naked, she didn’t show it. She barely even acknowledged her. Not a single _hello_ or a wave of her hand. 

Instead, her focus was on the flowers and envelopes scattered all around Josie’s desk. She raised an eyebrow at the red rose sticking out of the trashcan. 

“Aww, did you read my note, roomie?” she asked. The sugary sweet smile on the witch’s lips scared her. Just a bit. The brunette decided that she needed to deal with this Alyssa like she had done with the other Alyssa in years past. 

“Yes, thank you,” Josie said, somewhat sarcastically. “It was very sweet.” 

Alyssa sighed and walked over to her side of the room. “So you didn’t read it.” 

Josie ignored her, feeling bare and exposed. And not just because she was naked. She turned around so that her back faced the other girl. She hoped it was enough to hide the way her chest was heaving. 

Seeing Alyssa like this made her heart pound. The fact that she would have to sleep in the same room as her made it stop. She found that she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. 

“ _Woah_.” The surprise in Alyssa’s voice was enough for Josie to turn back around. “What, did you get mauled by an animal or something?”

Fuck. 

Josie had forgotten to cover up the gashes on her back. Her eyes widened and she quickly moved her hair to rest over her shoulders and hide it from view. 

“No,” she said. Alyssa smirked. “Why are you looking anyway?” 

She hoped making the other girl out to be some sort of pervert would distract her from what she had seen. 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Alyssa told her with a shrug. She muttered, more for herself than for Josie, “I’m lucky you’re even wearing a towel.” 

The siphoner frowned. Was it common for Josie Parker to walk around here naked or something?

She tightened her hold on her towel and realized that she needed to get ready. She only had about an hour until Lizzie came over. 

Okay. Where were her clothes?

There was a small closet on her side of the room, and she opened that first. She took out a cute top and immediately put it back after holding it up to her own body. It was lacy and she doubted it would even cover more than an inch of her skin. 

All the other tops were the same. Cut short, revealing, and _beautiful_. None of them resembled the Salvatore boarding school uniform, but they all had the emblem embroidered somewhere on the sleeve or near the front.

Back in her own world, Josie would never wear any of these clothes. She wasn’t one to shy away from showing her stomach or wearing a short skirt, but this was a lot different than that. She just didn’t have the confidence. Not before. And certainly not after...the _darkness_. 

Hmm. Maybe she had the wrong closet? 

If it was Alyssa’s, the other girl hadn’t stopped her from going through it yet. None of this made much sense. 

“Hey, um...” Josie spoke up, voice deceptively casual. “Where’s my closet?” 

The room was silent for a couple of long, painstaking seconds. The siphoner turned around and saw the confused look on her roommate’s face. 

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not,” Alyssa deadpanned, at last. She crossed her arms and sat up in her desk chair. 

“No, I, uh,” Josie stammered over her words, not knowing how to say this. “I’m having some trouble with my memories right now,” she finally admitted. “After what happened, you know.” 

Alyssa frowned. “Oh.” 

Their eyes met dangerously. Later, Josie wouldn’t be able to remember who had looked away first. There was a flash of emotion across Alyssa’s face, like...

Pity? It was a little more than sympathy, but not quite understanding or empathy. Josie wondered how truly different _this_ Alyssa was to the Alyssa she knew. Did this one also have her memories erased after blowing up her childhood home and killing her parents?

“Okay,” Alyssa finished. Josie cleared her throat and nodded. It was not lost on her that they had just shared a moment. 

“Look, veggie,” the other witch said. Josie raised her eyebrows and scoffed underneath her breath. _Veggie_? “That _is_ your closet. You’re standing in front of it.” 

Josie’s shoulders dropped. She wouldn’t be able to wear any of these clothes. She wanted to see herself in them, but she knew she was too insecure to even try them on. She also knew that she _shouldn’t_ care, that she could wear whatever she wanted and if someone had a problem with it, they could just look away, but she still did all the same. 

“...But,” Alyssa continued, “you also have more clothes in your dresser. You usually pick something from the bottom drawer.” 

Josie’s lips parted just barely, stunned by this side of Alyssa that she had never seen before. She leaned away, taken aback. “Thank you.” 

“Mhmm.” 

She quickly moved to her dresser and picked something out of the bottom drawer. A pretty, white blouse and a black skirt. She changed in the bathroom and brushed her hair, but she didn’t put any make-up on. 

Right on time, Lizzie Parker knocked on her door at eight o’clock. 

“Ready?” she asked, smiling. Josie nodded. 

“I think I am.” She smiled back. 

—

Fuck.

_Fuck_. 

Josie was so _not_ ready.

The dining hall was _full_. Full of faces she recognized, faces she didn’t, full of people she loved but could never tell them, full of people she rather didn’t like but she could never tell them that, either. 

(The only person who didn’t seem to be here was Hope Marshall.) 

Students Josie had never talked to before kept coming up to her, asking her if she was okay, or what happened. She doubted they really cared, but it felt nice that they even bothered. It was clear to her now that Josie Parker was a little more popular than Josie Saltzman. 

This time, Josie found that she didn’t really mind. 

What she _did_ mind was how quickly Lizzie abandoned her to find MG, since he would be having dinner with their family. It left Josie alone, but not completely. 

“My favorite niece!” A booming, yet impossibly soft voice made the brunette turn around. Her eyes fell on a blonde man with short hair and a light scruff of a beard to match. 

Was he talking to her? 

She didn’t recognize him, but she realized that he was looking right at her. His smile was blinding and he swept her up into his arms within seconds. He didn’t seem to notice how she went rigid in his grip. 

Instead, he squeezed even harder. It made the cuts on her back hurt. A lot. “How are you?” the man murmured, like he was trying to savor the moment. 

“ _Luke_!” Another soft, scolding voice called from in front of the pair, where a blonde woman stood with her arms crossed. “We don’t _have_ favorites, remember?” 

Oh. Okay. So if the man that had just hugged her was Uncle Luke, did that mean this woman was Aunt Liv? Josie also couldn’t help but wonder if Aunt Liv was the _Olivia_ she had taken her middle name after. 

“Oh, please.” Luke shrugged off the other woman and rolled her eyes. Josie watched as Liv moved forward and hugged her just as tightly as Luke had, it not more. “Don’t act like you don’t. I’m not the one that took Lizzie on a twelve-hour shopping spree last summer, am I?” 

“No.” Liv released Josie from the hug and turned back to Luke. “But you did take her sister to a gay club when she was thirteen—“ 

What the hell?

“See,” Luke interrupted. “That sounds a little homophobic, don’t you think? Are you sure you want to finish that sentence, sis?” 

“You did _what_?” A third voice that Josie recognized cut Liv off from responding. It was Josette. She sounded angry. 

MG and Lizzie were with her, but they looked like they were having a hard time keeping their giggles in. 

“Oh, you know us, Jo.” Luke waved her off, but his throat bobbed. “We were just playing around.”

Josette didn’t look amused. She just raised an eyebrow and pressed her lips together. “You better be,” she told them.

Josie glanced between the three of them nervously. She felt like she was caught between three strangers. Her stomach twisted. 

“Okay,” Lizzie dragged the word out. It seemed that she was as desperate for a distraction as Josie. “Who’s hungry? I’m hungry. Is anyone else hungry?” 

“Very,” MG said, nodding vehemently. 

“Starving,” Josie added, even though she felt like she would rather pass out again than eat. She hadn’t been hungry for a long time. 

Josette continued to narrow her eyes suspiciously at her daughters, but she let it go for now. 

Within a few minutes, the group found an empty table in the back and sat down, making small talk here and there. Josie suspected that someone had already told her aunt and uncle about what happened, because they didn’t try to ask questions or make her feel uncomfortable about it. For that, Josie was grateful. 

Once they all had food in front of them and everyone slowly began to settle down, Liv spoke up. 

“How’s school been, girls?” she asked. 

Lizzie answered first, while Josie tried to keep her head down and swallow her green beans. There was too much food on her plate, and just the thought of finishing it all had her stomach turning. 

The siphoner could also see MG watching her out of the corner of her eye. Not just MG, but everyone. It felt like she was being constantly stared at by the entire dining hall. It seemed that whenever she glanced up, she caught someone else’s eye. 

“Pretty cool.” Lizzie shrugged and set her fork down. “The semester is ending soon so we’ve really just been reviewing for finals.” 

“Good, good.” A pause. “And what about you, Josie?” 

Josie looked up slowly and forced down the vomit rising in her throat. Dread pooled in her belly as she saw that all heads were turned to her. 

“Oh, the same,” she murmured, trying to make herself look casual. Unaffected. She was anything but. Her hold on her fork tightened, and she stared down at it and willed her fingers to relax. They didn’t. She held her breath in the pause between, waiting. 

It came as a shock when Liv easily accepted her answer and moved on. Josie sighed quietly in relief as the blonde woman got into a short lecture about the good-old days back when she was in high school. It ended with a lesson about how they all needed to savor their youth and innocence while they still could, or something equally cliched. MG ate that shit up faster than his food. He had always been a bit of a suck-up when it came to their family. 

For the most part, Josie just kept her head down and moved her food around her plate. She chewed slowly and tried to keep her trembling fingers as still as possible. 

Somewhere along the way, she lost track of the conversation going on around her. 

“How’s your boyfriend, Joey?” 

It was so out of nowhere that Josie snapped her head up and choked on a green bean. Someone rubbed her back as she coughed. Of course, that only made it worse. 

“My boyfriend?” Her eyes darted around nervously. A _boyfriend_? Oh, _God_. Josie clenched her eyes shut and prayed to whoever was listening to let this be some cruel joke.

“Yeah.” Luke nodded and stuck a piece of meat between his lips. He chewed on it as he thought out loud. “What’s his name? John? Jack? Oh, _Jed_! Yeah, him. Where is he?” 

Josie failed to hide the way she winced. She sucked in a deep breath as her suspicion from earlier was all but thrown back into her face. 

“Hiding from you,” Liv muttered underneath her breath. Luke ignored her and stared expectantly at Josie. _Josie_ , who was trying hard not to go into cardiac arrest.

Instead, she leaned back into her seat and calmly set down her fork and knife. Her heart thudded from her chest and pulsed at her fingertips. 

“ _Oh_. Jed.” A numb smile pulled at her lips. She thought back to the note Jed had left her earlier. “He’s still recovering from the full moon last night,” Josie explained. “He said he would try to meet up with me tomorrow.” 

“Why don’t you invite him to eat breakfast with us, then?” Luke asked. He turned his head to look at Josette. “Jo, you said something about going out to town tomorrow, the five of us, right?”

He winked at Josie. “Let’s make it six.” 

Her smile faltered. 

“I guess I can ask...” the brunette trailed off, hoping someone would interrupt her and tell her not to. No one did. 

“Great.” Luke grinned. “I can’t wait to meet him.” 

Josie bit her lip. She felt as though she could wait years. “You can’t?” 

“Yeah,” Liv cut in with a snicker. Josette didn’t look so amused. “Lukey wants to see if he’s good enough for you.” 

Josie tried to laugh with her but it didn’t quite stick. Her laughter died in her throat. She imagined that she must have looked like she had a knife held to her throat or a gun to her head. Luke must have noticed it, too, because he changed the subject. 

“First, don’t call me that,” he said to his sister. She stuck her tongue out at him. “And second, enough about Joey’s boyfriend.” 

His eyes twinkled. Just enough for the light to catch them. “Wanna hear about _mine_?” 

Josette raised her eyebrows in surprise, but she looked happy for her brother. “Since when did you start dating someone?”

“We’re not dating, exactly,” Luke told her. Liv rolled her eyes, but both Lizzie and MG sat up in their seats to hear more. “We’ve just gone out a couple of times.” 

“And?” Liv and Lizzie cut in at the same time. The former circled the rim of her glass of water with her finger. She looked both curious and suspicious. 

“He’s human,” Luke confessed slowly.

Liv started laughing like she found that the funniest thing in the world. A twinge of annoyance flickered across her brother’s face.

“The coven is going to have a field day with that,” the blonde woman said. “We all know how well that went the first time.” 

A screech of metal against glass sounded throughout the table. All heads turned to the source. Josie saw that the noise had come from her mom, who had dropped her fork onto her plate. She had yet to pick it up. She was frozen. In time. In place. Josie didn’t know. 

“I couldn’t care less if they approve or not,” Luke said, like nothing had happened. But it was very obvious that something had. Josie couldn’t tell just by looking at them, though. “Their opinions don’t matter. Not really. They’ll have to listen to me either way.” 

“Being coven leader only gets you so far, brother,” Liv told him, shaking her head. Josie thought it might make Luke angry, but he only smiled. Through clenched teeth. 

“Whatever,” he murmured. His smile grew. It looked like revenge. “What about _you_ , Liv? How’s _your_ love life?” 

Liv huffed. “Nonexistent.” 

“That’s what I thought,” he said childishly. Josie smothered down a laugh. Thank God, then, that no one was paying attention to her. For the first time. “You need to get back in the game, sis.” 

“Me?” Liv glanced at her sister. “What about Jo?”

“Oh, no you don’t.” Josette waved her finger at them pointedly. “Nice try, but we’re not talking about me.” 

“Maybe we _should_ ,” Lizzie spoke up. Josie looked over at her sister, surprised. “I haven’t seen you with anyone since Josie and I were born, Mom. We won’t blame you if you want to put yourself out there again.” 

“Thank you, sweetie, but I’m happy with our family the way it is,” Josette reassured the blonde with a smile. It looked sad. 

Maybe she didn’t mean it to come off that way, but it did. Josie watched as her eyes left the table and stared off somewhere in the distance. 

The siphoner turned around to see where, but it only made her even more confused. At the other side of the hall, Alaric Saltzman was talking to another student and laughing with them. Josie sucked in a deep breath at the sight of him. He suddenly looked up and met her mother’s eyes. Both of their smiles fell. 

Josette turned back to Lizzie. She blinked like her attention had never been somewhere else. Lizzie was none the wiser. “I don’t need anything else but you guys.” 

For the rest of dinner, Josie didn’t say much. She watched MG crack jokes and laughed along with a few of them, and she _still_ didn’t say anything when Liv and Luke continued to argue like children, with Josette scolding them like their mother. 

As the dining hall began to clear out around nine o’clock, the adults made to stand from the table. 

“Alright. We should get headed home,” Josette told them all, hiding a yawn. Josie hadn’t realized how tired she looked until now. She briefly wondered if she had gotten any sleep last night. “I don’t think your school would let us spend the night again, but we’ll see you girls in the morning.” 

She hugged Josie goodbye first and kissed her forehead. The brunette found herself melting into the embrace as Aunt Liv and Uncle Luke did the same thing with Lizzie. When they switched places and Josie’s mother went to hug Lizzie, she leaned down and whispered something into the blonde’s ear. 

It sounded suspiciously like, _I need you to keep an eye on your sister._

Josie narrowed her eyes but pretended not to hear it, laughing when MG tried to shake Luke’s hand and the man just pulled him into a hug instead.

Before Josie knew it, it was just her, Lizzie, and MG. The three of them stayed in the dining hall, not wanting to leave or go to bed just yet. 

Josie quietly watched the other two talk, feeling a bit like she was on the outside watching in. She had felt that way all through dinner. It reminded her that these people were not strangers to _her_ , but that _she_ was a stranger to them. It had never been the other way around. She was simply fooling herself by thinking it. 

“Crap.” Sometime later, MG stood up and looked both ways down the dining hall. “I have to go. I told Kaleb I would help him with something before bed.” 

He wished them both a goodnight and went running for the exit. 

“ _Ugh_.” Lizzie checked the time and huffed out a sigh. “It’ll be curfew soon. We should probably get back to our rooms, too.” 

Josie bit the inside of her cheek and nodded. 

It was when she stood up from the dining tableherself that she bumped into another person. She immediately went to apologize and opened her mouth, thinking that it had been her fault, but when she got a good look at the person she had bumped into, her mouth ran dry and no sound came out. 

Penelope Park. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ll probably post the next chapter later tonight if you guys want


	5. Chapter 5

Josie swore her heart stopped beating. 

Dark brown eyes met green hazel. The siphoner had only seen that shade of hazel once before. It was a shock to her system, seeing them again now. 

_Penelope_. 

She stood as still as stone, staring at the other girl, lips parted and jaw dropped. Josie blinked once, twice, looked away, turned back, blinked again. As if she was just imagining things. 

For her part, she thought she was. It didn’t seem possible that Penelope could be here, unless she and Josie Parker had never dated, and Penelope had no reason to go to Belgium. 

God, she couldn’t believe it. She tried closing her mouth and opening it, but again, nothing came out. After a few tries, she managed to gasp out, “Penelope?” 

Penelope didn’t seem as affected. Her eyes were narrowed and dark, an emotion swirling in them that Josie couldn’t recognize. She thought it might be disinterest, but after another look she was sure it was pain. 

A second later, it was gone, and so was Penelope. She walked away without turning back, almost like she was running from something. 

Running from _Josie_. 

It confused the brunette, mostly because she had never seen Penelope lose her cool, collected composure before. While sometimes she was even mean, she had never been afraid, never timid either. 

It was one of the things about her that unnerved Josie—how calm she was after the break-up, like it hadn’t even bothered her or affected her, like she didn’t even care. 

(Josie knew now that she had.) 

After the break-up, some people would ask Josie how she hadn’t seen it coming, how she could have dated someone like that. She would answer that she didn’t know, but deep inside she did. 

Penelope had something about her, but most of them never saw it. They saw the way Josie cried after the break-up, how easily Penelope could bring tears to her eyes. They didn’t see how easily she could bring a smile to her lips, the way she looked at Josie. 

Not often. Never often. Never enough. But she _did_. 

And, when those same people asked Josie why she was upset that the girl who had broken her heart left, she would just say she didn’t know again. They had no idea what it was like to be with her and be the one she loved. They didn’t know what it was like to not be with her and be the one she suddenly hated. 

They thought they knew so many things, and Josie? 

Josie knew nothing. 

“That was...weird,” the siphoner muttered to herself. She slowly tore her gaze away from where she had been watching Penelope disappear into the distance. When she realized that Lizzie had heard her, she added, “Right?” 

The blonde still looked confused. 

“I mean, Penelope,” Josie explained with a nervous laugh, waving offhandedly in the direction the other girl had left in. “I wonder why she ran away like that.” 

Lizzie just shrugged, starting to walk in the direction of the dorm rooms. 

“It’s not really all that surprising,” she said. Josie held her breath so she wouldn’t miss what the blonde said next. She was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to hear it over the harsh thundering of her heart in her ears. “You crushed her heart, sis. I’m a total bitch and sometimes I even feel bad for her. You definitely could have handled that better.” 

Crushed _her_ heart? 

_ Me?  _

What the hell? 

Josie stopped walking. It was sudden enough that she almost bumped into yet another person in the hall, but she was able to dodge them before anything could happen. 

“What do you mean?” Josie asked, scrunching her eyebrows together. She sounded a little angry and defensive, she knew, but she couldn’t quite help herself. “She broke up with _me_. I couldn’t leave my room for a week after it happened. How are you on her side right now?” 

The _Lizzie_ she knew would have rather spit in Penelope’s face and compare her to a demon in hell than have any sympathy for her. The Lizzie she knew would have cursed Penelope to the darkest pits of Malivore and glare daggers just at the mere mention of her name. 

It was a painful reminder that this Lizzie wasn’t the sister she knew. It felt like a splash of cold water after laying in the sun all day. All this time, she had been deluding herself that everything was okay. Normal. 

“What are you talking about, Josie?” Lizzie stopped, too. She frowned and met Josie’s eyes, taken aback, as if she was only just now realizing the extent of her sister’s memory loss. “You broke up with her.” 

“I..” 

_ What?  _

But Josie would never do that. 

She loved Penelope. She had cried for months after the other girl broke up with her. She missed her all the time, and she wanted nothing more than to run after her and catch up, wanted nothing more than to yell at her and make her hurt like she was, but she couldn’t. 

_This_ Penelope wasn’t her Penelope Park, she had to remind herself. Maybe her last name wasn’t even the same, either. They were strangers, and it needed to stay that way. For now, Josie couldn’t do anything stupid, even if her heart was begging her to. 

She could only hope Josie Parker had had a good reason to break up with the girl. 

“Oh.” The brunette swallowed hard and blushed. Damn it. She shouldn’t have been so obvious. She should have just kept her mouth shut. 

“Right.” 

It wasn’t right, but for now she wouldn’t ask any more questions. She wanted everyone to think that she belonged here, and forgetting that she had broken up with someone was the exact opposite of that. She needed to pretend to be someone she wasn’t, but every time she tried, she only proved that she couldn’t even more. 

“You probably just need some more sleep to help jog your memory,” Lizzie said, but she didn’t sound convinced. She sounded upset. Desperate. “Do you want me to walk you back to your room?” 

Josie nodded, but the truth was, she barely heard the question. She felt as though she was six feet underwater and Lizzie—no, _everyone_ —was floating on the surface, just out of reach. 

She needed to find a way to fit into this new, unfamiliar place, the siphoner realized. But first, she needed to test what things had changed and what things had stayed the same between the two worlds. 

She knew three things. One: she was now Josie Parker, and her sister was Lizzie Parker. Two: her parents were no longer Caroline Salvatore and Alaric Saltzman, but Josette Parker and, well, Josie didn’t know who her father was supposed to be. Three: Josie Parker was dating Jed and had broken up with Penelope Park, but why, Josie also didn’t know. 

She didn’t know a lot of things. Damn it. 

She didn’t know if Malivore existed in this world, she didn’t know if there were other species of monsters besides witches, werewolves, and vampires. She didn’t know who was alive and who was dead. If Malivore didn’t exist, then that would make Landon dead, which would make his mother alive. She thought that maybe Josie Parker’s father was dead, since no one had mentioned him yet, and that maybe Klaus Mikaelson and Hayley Marshall were alive, since Hope was still using her mother’s last name and hiding her identity. 

That brought her to her final question:

Was Hope Marshall a tribrid? A _Mikaelson_?

“Aww. I thought for sure Chang would be here waiting for us when we came in.” Lizzie looked around Josie’s room with a deep sigh of disappointment. The brunette hadn’t even noticed that they had walked inside, let alone that the blonde had opened the door. “I even had a clever remark prepared and everything.” 

“You can tell it to me,” Josie offered.

“No.” Lizzie shook her head and put her hands on her hips. She sighed again. “It won’t be the same.” 

_Nothing will ever be the same_ , Josie thought dramatically. She rolled her shoulders once, twice, back and forth. She tried to relax, but the more she thought about it the more she began to panic. How long would she be stuck here, forced to pretend that she belonged? How long? Oh, God. _How long_ —

“Hey. Jo. Jo!” Lizzie’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts once again. She looked up into the curious eyes of her sister. “Are you okay?” 

And that was the question, wasn’t it? The plain answer was that _no_ , she wasn’t, but maybe someday she would be. A world with Lizzie was always better than a world without her, and she needed to appreciate this second chance before it was gone. 

“Yeah,” Josie said, staring past the blonde and at the wall. She felt miles away from here, and yet too close all the same. “Yeah, I am.” 

Lizzie smiled with her eyes, and Josie let her think everything was okay. She let her sister help her get ready for bed, she let her talk about everything and nothing, let her gossip about girls and boys, let her tuck her in and fluff her pillow and take care of her, but she didn’t let her stay. 

“Goodnight, Liz,” she murmured, trying not to sound too pushy and mean, but the truth was that she had been waiting for her to leave for a while, now. “I’ll be fine, really.”

“Fine.” Lizzie listened, for once. “Goodnight, Jo.” 

And then she was gone. 

The second Lizzie closed the door behind her, Josie sat up and turned the lights back on. No. She wasn’t going to sleep. She was far from tired. 

She needed to find out if Hope Marshall was a tribrid. A Mikaelson. But how? 

She could simply ask the girl, but that would be weird and possibly suspicious, since Josie Parker wouldn’t know to ask questions like that. And what if she was wrong? Josie wouldn’t be able to explain herself, other than admitting that she didn’t truly belong here, but she didn’t think she could bring herself to do that. 

She could try siphoning from Hope, maybe. Drawing magic from Hope was always a little different than everyone else, different than anything else Josie had ever experienced. It was more, but it was also too much and not enough all at once. It was... _consuming_. 

Siphoning from Hope always left her filled to the brim but undeniably wanting more. Was it possible? To be that greedy, to be that _selfish_? Josie didn’t know if she was alone in these thoughts, since she had never asked her sister what it felt like to siphon from the tribrid. 

Sometimes, when she was younger, much younger, she imagined that it only felt differently because she had a crush on Hope Marshall, and she blamed it on that. During school projects and class spell work and everything inbetween, she had assumed her inclination for Hope’s magic was due to her feelings for the girl, and that was why her heart pounded, why her entire body felt like it was catching onto flames every time it happened. 

Now, she knew _better_. 

It felt differently because Hope was a tribrid. 

When Josie was little, she had never noticed it because she hadn’t been looking for it at the time, hadn’t _known_ to look for it at the time. She wasn’t supposed to know that Hope Marshall was actually a Mikaelson, nor was she supposed to know that she was a tribrid. 

But she knew what it felt like to siphon from Hope now. Like fire racing down her veins, like heat raging in her chest and electricity running down her fingertips. 

Just one touch and Josie would be able to know. But how could she get within siphoning distance of the other girl? Hmm. She would need to make contact with Hope long enough to reach for her magic and pull from it, and she would also need a good excuse to do it. If Hope noticed her hands glowing red or something, the siphoner would be screwed. 

Josie spent the next three hours pacing her room and trying to work up the courage to confront Hope and create a plan to siphon from her. When she finally made up her mind, it was past midnight. 

_Yes_ , she decided. She would knock on Hope’s door under the guise of thanking her for last night. She would bring her a drink or a snack from the kitchens, and then, when she handed it to the other girl, she would try to siphon from her in the small instant their fingers brushed. 

It was the perfect plan, and that was why Josie found herself standing outside Hope’s room past curfew, a hot mug of tea in her hand. She only had to knock twice for the door to swing open. 

It was luck that Hope was the one to open it. For all Josie knew, Hope could have changed rooms from her world to this one. 

“Hi.” Josie gave a lame, shy wave with her free hand and tried to smile as innocently as she could. The girl across from her blinked sleepily and narrowed her eyes.

“Hi...?” Hope trailed off, unsure. She slowly dragged her gaze down and stopped at the mug of tea in her hand. It was too dark to be certain, but Josie could have sworn her cheeks flushed pink. 

“Sorry,” Josie tried to apologize, but she didn’t sound too terribly sorry. In truth, she couldn’t _wait_ to carry out her plan. “Did I wake you up?” 

“No.” Hope shook her head. “No, you didn’t.” 

She brushed a shaky hand through her hair. Josie noticed that it was sweaty and tangled, like she had just woken up from a nightmare. She took the chance to look the other girl over, also noticing that Hope’s sleep shirt was wrinkled. There was a dark ring of sweat around the collar of it. She was a bit too pale for Josie’s liking. 

“Good. Good.” She nodded, mostly nervous, just a bit awkward. “I didn’t see you at dinner.” 

Hope said nothing. 

After a long few seconds of silence, Josie shoved the mug of tea in front of her, like an offering. “I, um, I brought you some tea.” 

Hope raised a single eyebrow in surprise. She glanced down at the mug and then back up. 

“What kind?” 

Josie bit her lip, nose wrinkling in concern and a little bit of something else. Hope kind of looked like a hot mess. Some of her hair was stuck to her forehead and her lips were chapped and almost white. In her own world, Josie would have asked if she was okay, but she got the feeling that Josie Parker would never ask Hope Marshall that, so she kept her mouth shut. 

She also kept her mouth shut about the sweat soaking into Hope’s shirt, and about the light sheen of it on the skin of her neck. It made the sharp jut of her clavicle stand out and—

Josie cursed inwardly and tore her lingering gaze away. She forced herself to snap out of it. 

“Oh!” She suddenly remembered that Hope had asked something. God. She hoped the other girl hadn’t seen the way she was looking at her. “Green.” 

There was a long pause where Hope just stared at her for a few moments before she reached forward and took the offering. Her fingers slid clumsily over the siphoner’s for less than a second, and then she stepped back. 

_ Damn it.  _

Josie had been too distracted to focus on siphoning from her, and they hadn’t made contact long enough for Josie to even try to do it. She needed to find a different way to siphon from her. 

“Can I come in?” she blurted out. Hope picked her head up and looked at Josie like she was crazy. It made Josie wonder about their friendship, or lack of it. Maybe Josie Parker had never been in Hope’s room before, but Josie Saltzman had many times. 

“I...” Damn it. Hope was going to say no. Josie could see it written all over her face. It hurt. Just a little. 

“Please?” the brunette asked, pulling her bottom lip into her mouth and pouting. It seemed to work. 

Hope nudged the door open a little wider and nodded reluctantly. “Okay,” she said slowly, dragging the word out like she wasn’t completely sure about it at all. 

Josie caught the flicker of doubt and fear that shadowed her eyes. If the brunette had looked away for just a second, she might have missed it. Might have missed the way Hope’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard and led Josie into the room. 

The lights were off, but Hope flipped the switch back on as the door closed behind them. Josie saw that her room looked exactly as it always had. It was like nothing had changed. It made her heart ache. 

“Thank you,” Josie murmured, as Hope turned around to face her. 

She raised her eyebrows, confused. Or maybe even amused. Josie could never tell with her. 

“For letting you come in?” 

Josie watched Hope walk to the other side of the room and approach her desk, mug in hand. She took a sip of the tea and then lowered the mug down onto the table. 

“For saving me.” 

Hope froze. Just enough. 

“I didn’t,” she said quickly, too quickly. Josie opened her mouth to respond, but before she could say anything, Hope licked her lips and corrected herself, “I mean, it wasn’t a big deal.” 

“Well,” Josie told her with a smile, “I’m pretty sure I would be dead if it wasn’t for you.” 

She had meant it to come off as casual and offhand, but instead she sounded impossibly earnest. 

It must have startled Hope, because her eyes suddenly flashed up and met Josie’s own, but they were darker than the night. Josie stopped breathing. She could do nothing but stare. 

“You have no idea what happened, do you?” Hope asked darkly. The question was so random that Josie didn’t have enough time to hide the surprise on her face. 

“I...” She took a brave, desperate step forward, but found herself speechless. When she finally spoke, she sounded out of breath. And just a little bit needy. “Why don’t you tell me?” 

Hope stared at her long and hard, before she shrugged, like she didn’t care. But Josie knew better. “It won’t make you remember.” 

“No, but...” 

_But it’ll make me feel better_ , she wanted to say, but the words cut on the way up and left her in agony of uttering them. She said nothing at all. 

“It’s late,” Hope whispered, after a minute passed where Josie was too afraid to say anything but too stubborn to leave. She somehow forgot why she had come here in the first place. “You should go.”

The message was clear: _if you’re looking for answers, you won’t find them here._

“No.” Josie shook her head. She wouldn’t accept that. She hadn’t spent the past few hours overthinking something that would last less than five minutes. She knew Hope was just trying to push her away. She silently pleaded with the other girl to look her in the eye, but she didn’t. “You could have chosen not to save me that night. You could have left me there to die. But you didn’t.” 

Hope turned away. She couldn’t even face Josie anymore. The siphoner wanted to call her a coward, but she knew Hope was anything but. 

She watched the other girl bring her hand up to her lips and ghost her fingers over them—almost like she was reliving a memory—before she caught herself and dropped her hand. Her fist clenched at her side for just a moment and Josie could do nothing but _watch_ as the other girl forced her fingers to unfurl and relax. 

When Hope finally opened her mouth, it was only to shut it again. Her jaw visibly ticked, the tensed muscles of the back of her neck pulled taut. 

“No,” she said coldly. “But I think I should have.” 

Josie stepped back, both surprised and hurt. Her vision blurred and her chest shook. She was such an idiot. Stupid. _Stupid_. Her bottom lip wobbled dangerously. The tears fell before she could stop them. 

Memories of Hope Mikaelson danced across her mind and stole her breath, her thoughts:

The way the tribrid would intertwine her fingers with Josie’s whenever they did magic together, the way she smiled and laughed with her, the way she looked at Josie. Oh, God, the way she looked at Josie! 

The memories made her skin itch. Itch for her friend Hope Mikaelson like a scratch she’d never be rid of. She wiped angrily at her eyes and slammed the door on her way out, unable to bear the uncaring, blank mask Hope Marshall wore for her now. 

How silly of her. Josie thought. What a fool she had been! To think she could pretend that things would ever be normal again. 


	6. Chapter 6

Josie woke up from something hard slapping her across the face. She instantly sat up and snapped open her eyes, blinking through her blurry vision to see Alyssa Chang hovering above her. 

The witch had a pillow dangling from her hand, a bored and unimpressed look on her face. She was wearing regular clothes. 

Josie briefly wondered how long Alyssa had been watching her sleep.

“Your phone keeps ringing,” the other girl said. She let the pillow carelessly fall to the floor and stepped back. “You should answer it before I do, and I can’t say you’ll like my way better.” 

Well. If there was one thing that hadn’t changed in this new, messed up world, it was Alyssa. 

Josie scowled at the other girl. It made her lips hurt. They felt puffy and swollen from when she had spent most of last night trying not to cry. Her eyes hurt, too. The lids of them were sticky and heavy from dried tears. She was sure a headache was coming. 

Alyssa smacking her across the face with a pillow certainly wouldn’t help. Josie looked at the other girl curiously. She remembered that Alyssa hadn’t been here when she was pacing the room last night, nor when she got back from Hope’s and went to sleep.

“Where did you go last night?” The siphoner swung her legs over the side of her bed and reached for her phone. She had seven missed calls from Lizzie, two from Josette, and one from Jed. 

_Shit_. 

“Why do you care?” Alyssa arched an eyebrow and started to make up her bed. It must have been early. 

“I’m just curious.” Josie shrugged innocently as she thought about who she should call back first. She didn’t think she was ready to speak to Josie Parker’s boyfriend yet. “You weren’t here when I went to sleep.” 

“A bit hypocritical, isn’t it?” With a wave of her hand, Alyssa’s pillows rearranged themselves neatly on her bed. She turned back to Josie and gave her a knowing look, like she could see right through her. 

“It’s not like _you_ can judge, roomie,” Alyssa continued with a smile. It sent a shiver down Josie’s spine. The witch’s voice was much more honeyed than it had been before, but there was something else there. Something bitter. “Everyone knows how much you like to play after dark.” 

Josie scrunched up her eyebrows and wrinkled her nose in confusion. 

“What does that even mean?” she asked. A part of her knew well enough what it meant. 

Alyssa didn’t bother to explain. The witch just smirked even more. Before Josie could ask another question, her phone started ringing. 

It was a call from Lizzie. 

The siphoner rolled her eyes at Alyssa and brought the phone up to her ear. She cleared her throat and mentally prepared herself to speak. 

“Hey,” she said. 

“Hey—“

On the other side of the line, Lizzie cut herself off. 

“Wait.” She paused. “Did you just wake up?”

Josie bit her lip. Why would Lizzie care if she just woke up? Unless they had something planned...

Oh no.

She was supposed to be having breakfast with her family. Or rather, Josie Parker’s family. 

The siphoner gulped messily. “No...” 

“Good,” Lizzie told her. “‘Cause Mom’s already here and she’s waiting outside for us. I should warn you that she’s going to try and take you to her work after we get breakfast.” 

_ Take me where?  _

“Her work?”

Where did Josette work again? Josie tried to rack her brain for the answer, but it didn’t quite come. Was she a teacher or a professor of some kind? No, that didn’t make sense. 

When it finally dawned on the siphoner, she cursed herself inwardly. Josette was a _doctor_. She had said something about examining Josie herself earlier. The woman was probably hoping to take her to a hospital. 

“Yeah,” Lizzie continued obliviously, “but she’s gonna tell you we’re going out for ice cream.” 

“What?” Josie sputtered. No. She couldn’t go to a hospital. Couldn’t they see? There was nothing wrong with her. Nothing they could _fix_ , anyway. The faster they realized that, the better. “But I’m fine.” 

“You’re not.” A deep sigh came from the other side of the line. “You keep trying to pretend that you are but you’re not fooling anyone.” 

Josie didn’t know how to feel about that. Kind of offended, maybe. She thought she was doing a good job. Obviously not. 

“And honestly we’re getting worried, Jo,” Lizzie said. “Mom. Uncle Luke. Aunt Liv. All of us.” 

Josie was worried, too. She was worried that they would find out she wasn’t Josie Parker, she was worried that they would _never_ find out all the same. Even now, she could barely speak without feeling like she was about to say the wrong thing, or the worst right thing. 

“Are you still there?”

_ Not really. _

Her thoughts lingered at the back of her mind, pulling at her. She needed to keep them there. She needed to keep herself here, in the present. So, Josie let her thoughts go. She let them go without a fight. 

“Yeah,” Josie murmured softly. She felt Alyssa’s eyes on her, but she didn’t dare look up. “I’m still here.” 

Lizzie didn’t notice a damn thing. Josie didn’t know if she was hurt or relieved by it. 

“Listen,” the blonde told her, “the headmaster wants to talk to me before we go, but I’ll meet you outside at the front. Okay?” 

The headmaster? _Alaric_? 

What would he be talking to Lizzie and only _Lizzie_ about? And why was Josie excluded? The brunette frowned. Something hot and heavy formed thick in her chest. She missed her dad. Much more than she would have thought possible. 

“Oh,” Josie said, and then, a little shyly, added, “do you think he wants to see me, too?” 

She couldn’t keep the hope out of her voice. Lizzie couldn’t hear it through the phone all the same. 

“No,” Lizzie told her. Did it hurt? Of course not. The ache in her chest, in her heart? That was _nothing_. “You’re good. Bye! Love you!” 

The call ended and Josie numbly put down the phone. Yet another difference between Lizzie Parker and Lizzie Saltzman. _Her_ Lizzie would have waited for Josie to say she loved her back before hanging up. 

When her phone started ringing again not a minute later, Josie blindly answered it, stupidly thinking it might have been Lizzie. Stupidly _hoping_. 

“Hey—“

Josie’s blood thickened to ice. It was Jed.

“—So I just passed your sister in the hallway and she told me that I’m going out with your family today?” The boy trailed it off like a question, and there was a small pause. Josie realized that she  was supposed to say something. 

“Uh...” Nothing else came out. She hadn’t heard his voice in a while, Josie realized. It was a little higher than she remembered. 

“She also made fun of the shirt I’m wearing,” Jed continued, seemingly unaware. “So I don’t know if she was trying to tell me that I should change before I see your mom or if that’s just Lizzie being Lizzie...” 

“Uh...” Again. Nothing. 

From the other side of the room, Alyssa asked, “Are you having a stroke?” 

Josie ignored her and chose to pretend that the other girl wasn’t eavesdropping. 

“Anyway, I’m on my way to your room,” Jed finished. Josie swore her heart jumped into her throat. “I thought we could walk together so we look more like a couple. Is Alyssa in there with you?” 

_Alyssa_? What did she have to do with anything? Josie scrunched up her nose and glanced at her roommate out of the corner of her eye. 

“Yes...?” Alyssa glanced suspiciously over at her and their eyes caught. Josie hurriedly looked back down. She pretended not to notice the way Alyssa narrowed her gaze after her. 

“Yes,” she repeated into the phone, a little more sure of herself, now. “Yes, she is.” 

“Cool. Cool.” Jed’s voice cracked. He didn’t sound like anything was very _cool_ at all. “I’m just around the corner. I guess I’ll see you soon, then.” 

_ See me soon?  _

Oh. Right. He was coming over. Then they would be eating breakfast with Josie’s family. And the siphoner was still in her pajamas. 

God.

“Jo?” 

The brunette swore underneath her breath. 

“Yes!” Her voice cracked, too. “See you!” 

Josie barely had time to grab some clothes out of her dresser before a knock sounded at the door. She hugged the bundle of clothes to her chest and moved towards the bathroom. 

“That’s Jed,” she told Alyssa, without even looking back. “Can you let him in while I change in the bathroom?” 

“Sure,” Alyssa said quickly. Far too quickly. Josie almost tripped over herself. The witch must have heard how it sounded, too, because she immediately went to correct herself. “I mean, whatever.”

Josie narrowed her eyes thoughtfully but decided not to dwell on it for the moment. She could always think about it later. For now, she needed to get a move on.

“Thanks.” 

She locked the bathroom door behind her, and tried her best to ignore the voices on the other side of it. When she couldn’t, she turned the sink faucet on and let the sound of the water running distract her. 

Glancing at the mirror, her reflection looked more pale than the day before. She wanted to blame it on a trick of the light, but there was no denying the dark-purple circles under her eyes or how bloodshot they were. 

She looked...tired. She felt it, too. The cuts on her back were still hurting, and they stung just enough to remind her that they were there. 

A part of her knew she could heal the cuts, but another part wondered if she would lose herself and go absolutely crazy if she did. They were the only evidence she had that the night of the lake incident even happened. 

Still, Josie couldn’t help but think how much worse the jagged slashes on her back could have been. How deep the scratches _should’ve_ been, but _weren’t_. 

Sighing, she finished changing into her clothes, washed her face, and did her make-up. When she was done getting ready, she stared at her reflection again for several long moments, before she swallowed hard and steeled herself for the day ahead. 

Alyssa and Jed were talking in hushed whispers when she came out of the bathroom. They both turned to her as she opened the door, and Josie didn’t miss the way Alyssa took a step back. She also didn’t miss the way Jed watched her before shaking himself out of it and smiling at Josie. 

Josie almost frowned before she caught herself. But Jed’s smile was wide enough to bridge the distance between them. 

For a second, Josie forgot that they were dating. She could only look at him and see the friend he had always been to her. 

“Hey, babe.” He crossed the space between them and reached out to her with both arms. Josie choked on a squeak. “You look good. I’m glad you’re feeling better.” 

He leaned down, dangerously close enough for a kiss, and Josie panicked. She somehow both blanched and blushed at the same time. With another barely-concealed squeak, she dodged his lips and instead wrapped her arms around his shoulders in a tense hug, patting his back awkwardly. 

“You—“ Another pat. “—Too.” 

His arms felt safe, at least. His body was warm, too. 

(Wolves always did run a little hotter than witches and vampires. Josie would never say it out loud, but she thought it made them pretty good at hugs.) 

Alyssa snickered behind them. Josie glared at her over Jed’s shoulder. She had to bite her lip to stop a sigh of relief from escaping when Jed finally let her go and stepped back. 

He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to the side. 

“ _Are_ you feeling better?” he asked, as if taking his words back from just seconds ago. 

Josie forced a tighter smile on her face. She needed to do a better job of pretending she was okay. 

“No one’s really filled me in on what happened,” Jed told her. “I only found out yesterday morning. Some girl asked me if I was speaking at your funeral.” 

Josie’s smile fell completely at that.

“What?” 

“Yeah. One of your friends. Jessica, I think?” He sounded casual, almost. Josie couldn’t tell if he was playing with her or not. “I don’t know why she thought you were dead.” 

“Jessica?” Josie knitted her eyebrows together as she turned the name over in her head. It felt familiar. Familiar enough. “Oh! She sent me a box of chocolates.” 

She blushed. Crap. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Thank you for the wolf, by the way,” she added, like an afterthought. 

Jed smirked boyishly, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. Somewhere in the room, Alyssa scoffed. Josie wouldn’t be thanking her for her note again anytime soon. 

“Yeah. No problem,” Jed said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here sooner.”

Josie was glad he hadn’t been. It would have been too much at once, but she wouldn’t tell him that. 

“I had to take care of one of the new wolves,” Jed explained. “He had a really rough night. You know, Ethan? You gave him a tour when he first started here.” 

Um. Josie blinked and stared at the boy blankly. 

_Who?_ She wanted to ask, but she didn’t. If she had Josie Parker’s memories, she was sure she would have known the answer to that. For now, she would pretend to know who Ethan was, who Jessica was, and who _all_ these people were. 

“Oh, _Ethan_!” Yeah. Josie really didn’t know who the fuck that was. “Aww. Poor baby.” 

Jed smiled. 

“I know.” He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and looked around the room. They were nice jeans. No rips. “So, your family...?” 

Josie felt bile rise in her throat. She wondered if anyone would believe her if she pretended to be sick and stayed in her room all day. 

“Oh, no.” The brunette waved him off with a flush to her cheeks. Secretly, she was pleading with him to listen to her. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Jed told her. She hid a cringe behind a smile. “I’ve been wanting to get out more.” 

Guilt made her stomach clench. She cleared her throat. 

“We should get going, then,” Josie said. She faced away from him to hide the guilt, under the guise of looking for a purse or some sort of wallet. 

She couldn’t find it. Maybe Josie Parker didn’t have one. Instead, she just grabbed her phone. 

“Sounds good.” Jed stepped towards the door, but slowly, like he was waiting for something. He held it open for Josie, but not before turning back to her roommate. “Bye, um, Alyssa.” 

The witch looked up from her desk. She brought her hand up for a wave before she caught Josie’s eye and dropped it. “Bye, Jed.” 

Josie couldn’t tell if she was smiling or not. She bit her lip and wondered what Alyssa would say if she invited her to breakfast. No. She was being silly. Alyssa wouldn’t want to come. And Josie had no right. She didn’t. 

“See you later, _roomie_.” It was out before Josie could close her mouth. She bit her tongue, surprised by her own boldness. Why had she said that? 

Alyssa smiled. Josie didn’t know if it was real or not, but when she spoke, her voice was softer than the siphoner had ever heard it before. “See you.” 

Jed reached for her hand as he closed the door. Josie’s stomach twisted and she fought the impulse to pull away from his grip and bat his hand away. She swallowed down a grimace and fought to keep it there. She was much closer to him than she had ever been before. Much, _much_ closer. And she had no idea how to feel about it. 

“Did you do her a favor or something?” Jed asked, as he intertwined their fingers firmly together and pulled her into the hall, leading them to the front of the school where Josie’s mom would be waiting. “I’ve never seen her like that before.” 

“Like what?” Josie asked. Her eyes were drawn down to their combined hands. She tried not to make it obvious, but it was hard. 

It wasn’t like the hallway was completely empty, either. Josie felt like the few people that lingered against walls and by doors were staring at them. Staring at them...holding hands. Oh, _God_. Was her palm sweaty? Her fingers? 

She hoped not. 

Holding hands with Jed was not what she had expected at all. His skin was rough and calloused, and his fingers certainly weren’t small, but he was gentle. Like he didn’t feel the need to hold on too tight. Like he wasn’t afraid of losing her. It was different.

It was...

It was just everything Josie hadn’t expected. 

“Like she...” Whatever Jed said next, Josie did not hear a single word. Her eyes caught on a familiar head of auburn hair and she tuned him right out. 

Her lips parted before she closed them shut. The ghost of a whisper lingered at the tip of her tongue. 

Hope Mikael—

_Marshall_ , Josie reminded herself. Corrected herself. Damn it. She would need to find a way to separate the two in her mind. Before she gave herself away. 

_Hope Marshall_ , she repeated, in her head. Once. Twice. More. Again and again. Each time felt more like a lie than the last. _Hope Marshall._

The other girl was not ten feet away, rounding the corner of the dorm hallway, yet Josie felt as though they were miles apart. As if every step closer only moved them further. 

Maybe it was for the best, she thought, as she looked away and down to the floor. Deep down, she knew that Hope had just been trying to push her away last night, but it still hurt. Of course, it did. Someone wishing you dead was never supposed to make you feel very good. 

Yet, Josie couldn’t help herself. 

She looked back up in the direction of where she’d seen Hope last and their eyes met. Brown on blue. Darker blue than they had been last night, or maybe Josie was just imagining it. 

Her knees went weak. She didn’t know how she was still moving, maybe it was her hand in Jed’s that kept dragging her along, pulling her both closer and farther, but she felt paralyzed. 

She watched as, very briefly, Hope’s eyes flashed down to where Josie’s hand was intertwined with Jed’s own. If possible, and surely it wasn’t, the other girl’s eyes darkened even more. 

Josie felt her heart race. 

She didn’t know quite why, or maybe she did and just could never admit it, but for some reason she dropped Jed’s hand and instead used it to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. 

Hope’s eyes followed. 

Josie felt herself burn underneath her gaze. _Why?_ She wondered. _Why do you look at me like that?_

Hope was finally forced to look away as they passed each other. Josie found herself able to breathe again. Just a little. Just enough. She hadn’t even known she’d been holding her breath. 

She was embarrassed to realize that she wanted to turn around, to watch Hope go. The urge was there, maddening, calling to her, asking her to look, for just a moment, for just a second longer. She didn’t. 

It made her _want_. She didn’t know what, but she wanted. Oh, God, she _wanted_. Wanted to run to her friend Hope, maybe, who was no longer her friend, wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her out of this insanity, out of this crazy world she didn’t belong in, wanted to shake herself out of it, wanted to shake everyone out of it, maybe. 

It didn’t matter what she wanted.

She didn’t _want_.

She _didn’t_. 

Next to her, Jed cleared his throat. She watched him cover a wince with a roll of his shoulders. She bit her lip, hesitated. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, but when Jed glanced over at her in surprise, she got the feeling that Josie Parker would have never asked that. 

“Nothing,” he said, but Josie knew that there was more. She also knew that Jed would tell her, if she let him. And he did. “She just freaks me out sometimes, you know?” 

_She?_ Were they talking about Alyssa Chang again? 

“Who?” Damn it. Josie had lost track of their conversation. She needed to pay more attention. 

“Marshall,” Jed said uneasily. He rubbed the back of his neck again. Josie started to think it was a habit of his. She had never noticed it before. 

“What do you mean?” She wanted to comfort him, but she didn’t know why. She almost felt compelled to grab his hand again. It was odd. 

“There’s just something off about her,” he mumbled, “but I don’t know what.” 

Josie felt her heart give a phantom thud. She was sure it had stopped beating a while ago. 

“The rest of the boys feel it, too,” Jed continued. “I mean, I didn’t really notice it until last year after the summer, but she’s different, now.” 

More for himself than for her, he added, “Her scent even changed.” He snuffed in a breath, as if he something still clung to the inside of his nose and he was having a hard time understanding it. 

“Her scent?” Josie spoke up. Jed didn’t look at her, but she looked at him. She saw his jaw twitch, his eyes flit around uncertainly. 

“Yeah.” 

Josie’s brows came together again. Her frown deepened. It annoyed her.

She had to swallow before she asked, “What does she smell like?” 

Jed went silent. Just when the siphoner was sure he wouldn’t answer, he did. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted, after a beat. “She smells like... _pack_. But not...pack.” 

He glanced at her. Unsure. “You know?” 

Josie didn’t know. 

She looked at Jed, then, into his warm, brown eyes that spoke of gold less often than more, and though she had never once wanted to know what it felt like to be a wolf, had never thought of belonging to a pack instead of a coven, had never actually thought of it before at _all_ , really, but—

She thought about it, then.

For just a moment. 


	7. Chapter 7

When they finally made it outside to the front of the school, Josie was still thinking about what Jed had said. It consumed her thoughts. She tried to keep a smile on her face as they walked together, but it didn’t quite stick. 

She should have been happy. _Elated_. That this grand mystery of hers was finally solved. If Hope Mikaelson smelled like _pack_ , whatever that meant, then that made her a werewolf. It was clear to Josie now that being a wolf would then also make Hope a tribrid. 

It should have made Josie happier that Jed had no idea, too. How someone with supernatural abilities could be so oblivious, Josie would never know. The boy had stared it right in the face, blinked, and had not even noticed it. Josie almost wanted to laugh. Yet, it bothered her. 

Was it so hard? Josie wondered. How could someone be so blind? But there was a time when she used to be blind, too. 

“Of course, whatever you need. As long as you get the girls back before curfew it’s more than fine with me...” 

Josie snapped herself out of it and focused on the group of people talking in front of her. There was a black SUV behind them, but that wasn’t what Josie noticed first. 

Only the person’s back was visible to Josie, but she could tell right away from the blonde hair and the slim figure that it was Caroline Salvatore. 

Uncle Luke, Aunt Liv, and Josette were standing next to her. They all turned around at the arrival of Josie and Jed.

Caroline spoke first. 

“Hi, sweetie.” She looked right at Josie. Eyes kind. Open. “How’s everything going? I’m so happy to see you back on your feet again.” 

Josie gulped and fought the urge to turn away. It was hard. To look at the woman before her and not see the mother who had taken care of her all her life. To look at the woman and see a stranger. 

Her hands twitched at her side. Her toes curled in her shoes. She wanted to throw herself into her mother’s arms, wanted to cry her heart out, but she couldn’t. 

The only thing she could do was recall the memories and moments she shared with her mother, but all of them were tainted, ruined by the reality of what had happened, what had changed, the reality of the truth. And the truth was this: 

The Caroline Salvatore she knew was gone. 

Josie Parker had no memories of her. And what did Josie Saltzman have? 

Holiday visits and spring break trips that could never last long enough, not nearly long enough for Josie. Too many goodbye hugs andnot nearly enough happy ones. 

“Everything’s been great,” Josie lied, and if Caroline caught the way her heart skipped a beat, she didn’t mention it. “Thank you.” 

The blonde smiled warmly back at her, and it only reminded Josie of what she didn’t have. 

“And what about you, Jed?” Caroline turned to the boy with a smile just as warm. “How’s the pack been?” 

Jed’s cheeks twinged with pink. It looked nice on him. It made him appear...younger. 

“All good, Mrs. Salvatore.” 

Josie whirled her head at him. _Mrs?_ As in, Caroline was married? As in, she married Stefan Salvatore? As in, Stefan was still alive? 

_Fuck me._ Josie cursed herself in her head. She had called the woman Ms. Salvatore earlier. Hopefully she hadn’t been offended. 

“That’s good to hear.” Caroline stepped back, like she was about to leave. “Well, I don’t want to intrude on your quality family time. God knows how much we all need it every now and then. You all have fun.” 

She looked at Josie pointedly. Her eyes twinkled. 

“Enjoy your day away from school, honey,” she told her, squeezing her arm. Josie let herself imagine that Caroline was talking to her as a mother, and not as her headmistress. “Try not to think too much.” 

“I will,” Josie promised, but it was just another lie. She was starting to get good at them. 

Caroline walked back to the school building and left the group alone. It wasn’t until Jed cleared his throat and glanced at Josie meaningfully that she got the message. 

Right. This was the first time Josie Parker’s family were officially meeting Jed, Josie Parker’s _boyfriend_. The siphoner was supposed to be introducing him. 

“Hi,” she started awkwardly. “This is Jed.” 

A beat passed.

Luke and Liv stared at the boy, as if they were trying to intimidate him with just their eyes. Josette gave them a look to stop and turned towards Jed. 

“Well, Jed,” she said kindly, “it’s very nice to meet you.” 

“You, too,” the boy said, a little bit shy, for an alpha. Josie supposed it didn’t matter. “Thank you for inviting me to—“ 

“Finally!” An exasperated voice yelled from inside the car and interrupted him. “What took you two so long?” 

Lizzie Parker popped her head out of the car window, as if only just now noticing their arrival. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at them and tilted her head to the side. 

“On second thought, I don’t want to know,” she decided, before she put her earbuds back into her ears and dramatically rolled up the window again. 

It made Josie curious, but she got the feeling that speaking up about it would have embarrassed both her and Jed, so she didn’t. It ultimately didn’t matter what she wanted, because Luke asked them about it anyways. 

“Hmm,” he hummed, swallowing a smirk. Liv snickered next to him. Josette didn’t look so amused. “Do you know what my dear niece meant by that, Jed?” 

Jed shook his head fast enough to almost decapitate himself. “No, sir,” he said quickly. 

Luke smiled but let it go. He walked around the car and got into the driver seat, while Josie and Jed stuffed themselves into the back of the car. 

The ride into town didn’t take too long, but it felt like a lifetime. The radio wasn’t playing and the air conditioning system didn’t seem to be running. 

Josie suspected that her uncle was to blame. She was sure he was doing it to make them all sweat. She didn’t miss the way Luke kept eyeing her and Jed in the rearview mirror while he was driving. 

The whole breakfast affair did not go as smoothly as Josie wanted it to, either. The Mystic Grill was packed when they stepped inside. They hadn’t bothered to make a reservation, so they had to wait a few minutes before they were seated. 

“So, Jed, you’re an alpha right?” Josette asked, after they sat down and had their food in front of them. “What’s it like running a pack?” 

Jed smiled and set down his silverware. 

Josie almost jumped about a foot in the air when she felt his hand on her knee under the table. She didn’t know if he was trying to comfort her or something, but that definitely wasn’t helping. 

“It can be hard sometimes but I love my pack more than anything,” the boy told the other man. “They’re all like brothers to me. They’re my family.” 

Josie’s uncle seemed to like that answer. He thought on it for a second or two before asking, “Do you consider Josie to be part of your family?” 

Across the table, Lizzie rolled her eyes hard. Josette looked like she wanted to intervene or defend Jed, but she didn’t. 

“Yes,” the wolf said, as if there was any other way to answer a question like that. 

“That’s nice to hear.” Luke nodded thoughtfully. “You’re a year older than Josie, correct? That means you’ll be graduating soon. What plans do you have for after graduation?” 

Josie licked her lips and pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. 

“I haven’t really thought about it, if I’m being honest,” Jed admitted. “I think I’d like to go to college, but I definitely want to keep my options open before I make any big decisions.” 

He sounded...prepared. Josie wondered if he had practiced these answers or if he was really so charming. She had never seen it before. 

“Enough of the boring questions,” Liv cut in with a mischievous smile. “We should be asking the real stuff. Here, I have a good one for you, Jed.” 

Josie felt her stomach twist at that. With a glance at Jed, she saw his smile falter slightly. 

“How many kids do you plan on having?” Liv asked. Josie palmed her forehead and sighed. She was red from her head to her toes. Lizzie looked like she was having a hard time not laughing. Or at least not showing it. 

“In our coven,” Liv continued, without noticing a thing, “it’s a family tradition to have twins. Do you know what that means, Jed?” 

Jed swallowed before he spoke. His face was slightly green. Josie suspected it had nothing to do with the omelette on his plate. Yup. Definitely not food poisoning. 

“No, ma’am,” he mumbled. “But you really don’t need to tell me. I think I want to be surprised—“ 

“It means that you and Josie are going to keep trying until you get twins,” Liv said excitedly, a huge, evil grin on her face. 

“Liv!” Josette set down her knife on top of her place and pinched the bridge of her nose. Luke couldn’t hold in his laughter. “My daughter is fifteen. _Fifteen_!” 

“Oh, calm down.” Liv waved her sister off. “I’m just messing with them. You’re all too easy.”

“ _No_. No more questions from you.” She pointed a stern finger at the blonde, and then at her brother. “Or _you_. Got it?” 

Josie enjoyed the rest of her meal after that. While the toast she ordered was left untouched on her plate and she didn’t each much, the conversation could only go up from there. 

After they were all done eating and the check was signed and paid for, Josette stood up from the table and forced a large, excited (slightly scary) smile on her face. 

“Anyone up for dessert?”

—

There was an ice cream shop just down the road. It was airy and clean and just enough to distract Josie from the stress she had been feeling all day. 

There wasn’t anyone inside when the group ordered their ice cream, so they didn’t have to wait in a line. Even though she still wasn’t very hungry, Josie treated herself to a single scoop of birthday cake. Jed got a double scoop of rocky road and something green.

It looked kind of gross but she wasn’t going to tell him that. 

“So...” The boy pulled her off to the side after he paid for their ice cream. He lowered his voice and glanced around, as if to make sure no one was listening. It was the first time they had been alone all day. “What do you think?” 

He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. 

Josie bit her lip. What was he talking about? 

“You mean the ice cream?” She looked down at her scoop of birthday cake. “I don’t know. It’s okay.” She shrugged. She was honestly a little disappointed. She knew she should have just gotten plain vanilla. 

Jed let out a soft and bellied laugh, as if he found her words funny. 

“No, no,” he chuckled. “I mean, did we do a good job of pulling it off?”

He waggled his eyebrows. “Do you think they fell for it?” 

Josie leaned away, taken aback. Dread worked its way up her throat. It tasted like vomit. She forced it back down with a swallow that bobbed her throat. 

“Fell for what?” 

Jed’s smile dropped. He closed his mouth and opened it again. “You...”

“Hi, Jed.” Both Josie and Jed jumped a little at the sound of Josette’s voice right behind them. The woman squeezed Jed’s shoulder and smiled warmly at both of them, having not noticed a thing. “Do you mind if I steal her away for a few minutes?” 

Jed didn’t even glance at the woman.

“Not at all. She’s all yours,” he said, but he was still staring at Josie like he was trying to get her to understand something with just his eyes. 

Josie stared back, not wanting to understand it. Her cheeks flushed pink with, not quite fear, but something terrible. Oh, _God_. Had she seen this all wrong? 

“Come here, honey.” Josette dragged her off outside to a small water fountain nearby. For some reason, the fountain made Josie uneasy. She stayed as far away from it as she could without making it obvious. “Walk with me.” 

“How are you?” Josette asked, once she thought that they were a far enough distance away from the rest of the group. “Really.” 

Josie bit down on her bottom lip hard enough to taste blood as she thought about it. 

“I’m okay,” the brunette said slowly, testing the waters, really only seeing if she could get away with lying again. 

Josette gave her a plain look. “I don’t believe that,” she told her. 

Josie sighed quietly. _Then why did you ask?_ She thought. She said nothing at all, though she wanted to. She wanted to. 

They walked in silence for a few, agonizing, long seconds, before the older woman spoke again. 

“Lizzie told me that you tried to convince her that Penelope broke up with you.” The woman cut herself off, as if expecting Josie to pick up and explain herself. She didn’t, so Josette went on. “Considering that I was the one that taught you how to break up with her without hurting her feelings, I was surprised, to say the least. And very concerned.” 

She stopped walking and turned to her daughter. Josie stopped walking, too. 

“If you’re still confused about some things, you need to tell us,” she said. As if it was that easy, Josie thought. “It’s normal to have questions about what happened to you.” 

It didn’t feel very normal, and Josie guessed that it wasn’t. Perhaps Josette was just saying that to make her feel better about the fact that she couldn’t remember Friday night. That she couldn’t remember that she had broken up with Penelope. 

“Do you know why I broke up with Penelope?” Josie blurted before she could stop herself. 

Her face burned hot with something that made her stomach squirm. It was embarrassment. She started walking again to distract herself from the feeling. 

“You didn’t like the way her last name sounded like yours,” her mother told her with a straight face. 

“What?” Josie whipped around and clutched at her throat, surprised. Her stomach turned again. And again. Was Josie Parker really that awful? 

The older woman smiled at her reaction. 

“And your uncle says _I’m_ the one that needs to loosen up a little.” Oh. Josette had only been joking. The brunette didn’t laugh, and if she did, it wasn’t real. She could barely catch her breath. “Of course not, honey. You lost feelings for her a couple of months into your relationship and you didn’t want to lead her on.”

Josie all but heaved a sigh of relief. Her lungs shook and she had to stare at the ground beneath her feet in order to pull air into them. 

“At least, that’s what you told me,” Josette finished. “Do you have any other questions?” 

So many. 

The siphoner wanted to ask how it was possible that Josette was alive, how it was possible that the woman’s siblings were, how any of this was possible.

She must have been quiet for too long. Josette called her name. 

She spoke up, “Josie?” 

It was enough to startle the brunette out of her forbidden thoughts. Forbidden, because she could never ask them. Forbidden, because she wouldn’t let herself. 

“To be honest with you,” she admitted, “I don’t even know where to start.” 

“And that’s _okay_ ,” Josette was quick to reassure her. “I’m so sorry if I ever did anything to make you feel like you couldn’t be honest with me.” 

_It’s not you_ , Josie wanted to say. But it was. It was all of them. It was all of _her_. 

“I know we’ve been brushing off what happened to you, but we really do care, sweetie,” the older woman continued. “Nurse Wilma and your school therapist, Emma, suggested that we try not to upset you by bringing it up, at least until your body healed from what happened, so we wouldn’t stress or aggravate your condition. I told your aunt and uncle not to bring it up unless you did, but obviously they don’t know how to listen.” 

Aggravate my condition? What condition? Josie wondered. 

“Still, there’s a reason you can’t remember what happened.” Josette knitted her brows together, but the love and warmth in her eyes never left. “I’ve tried talking to your headmaster, but he’s just as confused as I am. He says that your classmate, the one that helped you out of the lake, claims that she didn’t see anything. I don’t know if she’s trying to cover for you or for the _both_ of you or if she’s honestly telling the truth, but for now she seems to be—“

“What do you mean?” Josie interrupted, and instantly regretted it. It was too late to take it back. She clarified, “By cover for me?” 

“They said that there was a chance that you were trying to...” she trailed off, as if she was searching for the right words that just wouldn’t come. 

Josie looked away and tried to fight off the chill that ran down her spine. It must have been the ice cream. Yes! It was the ice cream! There was no other reason she was shivering. 

“...End your life,” Josette finished, at last. She looked up and met her daughter’s eyes. “Have you ever felt that way before?” 

“No,” Josie said, simply because she couldn’t remember. It burned the back of her throat on the way out. “I don’t think so.” 

“Okay.” Josette seemed to exhale a deep sigh of relief at that. Her shoulders shuddered with the force of it. Josie could have sworn her eyes were wet with tears. “I want you to know that you can always come to me if you ever do feel that way, okay?” 

It was obvious that she wanted to say more, but Josie was glad that she didn’t. She was suddenly reminded of the fact that she was living someone else’s life, and that this was not her own mother. She felt like a thief. She did not deserve to hear these words. She was stealing them from someone else. 

“Okay,” Josie repeated in a soft murmur. Her eyes felt a little damp, too. “Thank you.” 

“Of course.” The older woman cleared her throat and laughed wetly, like she was trying to stop herself from crying. “Now, how does a trip to the hospital sound?” 

Josie did not like that sound of that at all. If anything, it made her nauseous. It must have shown on her face because Josette laughed again. 

“Fine,” the woman relented. “I won’t take you to the hospital.” 

“On one condition,” she added, before Josie could thank her. “You start attending your therapy sessions with Emma again. She thinks she might have a way to get your memories back.” 

Josie couldn’t help the dry, bitter laugh that tore from her own throat. She would never get her memories back. 

“What?” her mother asked, confused. 

She shook her head, still laughing. 

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.” 

—

Her first day of school as Josie Parker was Monday. 

She woke up early that morning, even before her roommate, struggling to brush off the nightmares that had plagued her sleep all throughout last night and well into the morning. Nightmares of her sister dying. Nightmares of herself—Josie Parker?—drowning. It had been a while since she could think of anything else. She couldn’t escape it.

The first thing she did was go to the bathroom and splash cold water in her face. 

She didn’t know what she was expecting the water to do when it hit her. To prepare her for the day ahead, to refresh her, to wake her up. But, no. The water did none of that. It was just cold. 

She brushed her teeth, dried her face with a towel, and went back into her room. 

It felt weird getting ready for class. It was so familiar, yet strange. Her room was different but she had lived here for years. She couldn’t recognize any of her clothes but they all fit perfectly. It was only her second night sleeping in Josie Parker’s bed but she had done it so many times before. 

It freaked her out a bit, but she found that she didn’t really mind. She would have to get used to it somehow. Sometime. So what, that she knew all these things without truly knowing them? 

A small part of her felt like this was her very first day at the Salvatore Boarding School all over again, young and new, surrounded by complete strangers. It was silly, of course. She knew every single inch of this place. It was supposed to be her home. 

Josie sighed and opened her closet. She would choose something in here instead of in her dresser. To fit in, she told herself. 

The brunette looked through her clothes and settled on a white crop top and a short, blue plaid skirt with a slit on the side. It barely covered her thighs but she convinced herself that it didn’t matter. 

When she was done changing, it was still early. Breakfast would be served in about an hour, but Josie still needed to figure out what classes she was taking. 

She rummaged through the pale-pink backpack sitting at the floor of her desk, but she couldn’t find a schedule in it. She checked her phone next, hoping that the school’s management system would be in there. 

It was. 

Josie smiled once she saw her classes. She had six periods, one of them being study hall. She had already taken all the other ones a few years ago. Hopefully that would make it easier on her. 

The brunette couldn’t help herself. She snuck a peek at Josie Parker’s grades. She saw that the girl had A’s in all of her classes except for her second period: Supernatural History. She had a C in that class. 

Josie’s nose wrinkled. Whatever. She wouldn’t judge, even if it did sting a little.

The siphoner had always prided herself on her grades. In fact, she had never gotten below a B on a single progress report. She obviously couldn’t say the same for herself, now. 

Well. She couldn’t say the same for much of anything, now. Everything was different. And it didn’t matter how much she hated it, she reminded herself, because having her twin here, alive, with her, was better than not having her here at all. 

Josie lost herself in these miserable thoughts and stared out at the wall. It was kind of dark. There was no natural light in the room, she noticed. Back in her own world, her room had a window outlooking the woods surrounding the school. 

On the sill of the window sat a small line of succulents and cacti, and Josie watered them once a week. 

(She briefly wondered if anyone had bothered to water them while she was gone.)

She would spend countless hours in front of the plants as she worked through her homework, or even when she was doing nothing at all. Somewhere along the way, the window started to comfort her. It brought her peace when her thoughts were anything but. 

“Why are you staring at the wall like that?” 

The words didn’t startle Josie as much as she thought they would. She had been waiting for Alyssa to wake up for a while, now. She wasn’t sure how long she had been stuck like that, staring at the wall like it was her old bedroom window. 

“What do you think about getting a window in here?” the siphoner asked, completely ignoring Alyssa’s own question. The other witch huffed out a sigh of annoyance. 

“I think...” Alyssa trailed off and paused. It was obvious that she had stopped herself from saying something rude. “A window?” 

“Yes.” Josie nodded and turned around. “A window.” 

Alyssa thought about it for a long moment or two. “As long as it’s not on my side of the room,” she decided, at last. “Then, fine. Whatever.” 

She grabbed some clothes and disappeared into the bathroom without another word. Josie watched her for a few seconds before looking back at the wall. The wall that wasn’t a window. 

Not yet. 

She could use magic to make a window, perhaps, or she could go out and buy one. She didn’t know if Josie Parker had any money, so she decided that she would have to make one out of magic. She would also probably have to talk to Alaric or Caroline about it. 

Not today, but maybe tomorrow or the day after. 

When she had time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry, this got really long :( do you guys prefer short chapters or longer ones? 
> 
> also, the pace is going to pick up a lot from here, so don’t worry


	8. Chapter 8

It was half an hour later that Alyssa finally came out of the bathroom. She went straight for the door.

Josie stood up from her desk, a little alarmed. 

“Where are you going?” she asked, and immediately swore at herself for doing it. She sounded...clingy. 

“To eat,” Alyssa said slowly, as if it was obvious and she was talking to a child. Then, she added, not kindly at all, “Do you need me to show you where the dining hall is?” 

Josie couldn’t help it. She scoffed. _I’ll show her_ , she thought. A part of her regretted telling the other girl about her memory problems. 

“Kidding,” Alyssa told her with a fake-sugary smile. She opened the door, then muttered, “I wouldn’t have, anyway.” 

Josie sighed deeply as the door closed behind her. She thought that they had made progress, but that was just her overthinking things and getting her hopes up. 

It wouldn’t be long before her first class, now. She would have to walk alone to the dining hall. She didn’t know which part scared her the most. 

After making sure she had all of her stuff, Josie slung her backpack over her shoulder and followed after Alyssa. The girl was already long gone by the time she stepped through the door, and she kept her eyes on the ground as she walked to the dining hall. 

It wasn’t a single minute before someone tapped her on the shoulder softly.

“Hey, Jo.” It was a wolf from Jed’s pack. His hair had a reddish tint to it that made the siphoner’s eyes linger. He grinned at Josie and Josie couldn’t help smiling back, even though she was surprised. 

Josie stared after him as the boy vanished down the hall, still slightly shocked. She had always thought wolves were usually too moody and busy being angry all the time to acknowledge anyone outside of their pack. 

She was proven very, very wrong. 

While she walked, members of Jed’s pack continued to greet her when they caught her eye or stumbled into her. 

Non-wolf friends of Josie Parker would approach her, too. Some were quiet, some were chatty, some a little too friendly, some not friendly at all, but they were there, and they made Josie feel a little less alone. Almost every single one asked how the siphoner was doing after the incident. She would have the same answer every single time. 

As she finally reached the dining hall, she saw that it was packed with students, and most of them went out of their way to try to talk to her. A vampire even asked her to sit at his table with his friends, but she politely declined his offer. 

Finding her way around the room was the easy part. She found her sister sitting at their usual table within seconds, which she blamed on years of experience, none of which she could actually remember. 

“Hey!” Lizzie waved her over with a smile. “I saved you a pudding cup.” 

She slid the cup of pudding across the table as Josie sat down between MG and a blonde. She faintly recognized the girl as a vampire in her year. Kaleb was sitting across from them, as well as another boy and a girl who were using magic to play with their food. 

It was to prepare for a practical spell test in first period, they claimed. Lizzie didn’t look like she believed them, but she didn’t tell them to stop. Josie learned that their names were Claire and Alex. She quickly thanked them both for sending her gifts while she was in the hospital wing. 

“You’re welcome,” Claire said, a little shyly. There was a flush to her cheeks. “Did you like the chocolates? I hope they tasted okay.” 

Oops. 

Josie actually hadn’t tried them. She was pretty sure the box had been empty when she opened it. 

Across the table, Lizzie swallowed guiltily. Josie eyed her with a frown. 

“I don’t know,” Josie admitted, lacing her fingers together and sitting up straighter. She slowly looked to her sister. “Lizzie?” 

The blonde choked on her food. When she recovered, she was scowling. “Why are you asking me?”

“Well,” the brunette deadpanned, “you ate all of them.” 

“I did not.” 

“Yes, you did.”

“Did not.” 

“Okay,” Claire interrupted, looking exasperated. She was no longer shy. “We are _not_ doing this at eight o’clock in the morning. Both of you shut up.” 

“Besides,” she added with a smile, “Alex has something he wants to tell everyone.” 

MG beamed. “He does?” 

“Yes.” Alex nodded. He was nervous. “You guys know Tommy? Well, he wants to take me out this Friday...” 

The boy got into a long story about how it happened. He was both congratulated and teased about it, but the conversation didn’t end there. 

Lizzie and the blonde vampire sitting next to Josie asked Alex all kinds of questions about Tommy, which the boy answered. The girls accepted his responses and moved onto other topics, like complaining about their classes and rating the teachers from worst to best. 

It felt so mundane, so ordinary, to argue over such inconsequential things, to whisper and gossip about friends and crushes, to rant and vent about bad teachers. Yet, Josie found herself enjoying it. Enjoying how normal it felt. Somewhere between all the Malivore monsters and the Merge, she had forgotten that she was just a teenager. 

It made her chest grow warm. Tight. She wasn’t sure why. She thought that maybe it was because she missed her old life. She told herself that she didn’t. She wouldn’t miss a damn thing that didn’t include her sister. 

“So...?” 

When Josie came to, everyone was looking at her. 

“Sorry.” She blushed and wiped the chocolate smear of pudding from the corner of her mouth. The appetite she had lost days ago was slowly coming back. “What were we talking about?” 

“It’s okay.” Claire laughed. “I was asking you how yesterday went. Lizzie won’t tell us. Did your family like Jed?” 

Josie went to open her mouth and answer, but someone else beat her there. 

“They _loved_ me.” 

Jed’s voice came just behind her ear, a cocky grin playing at his lips. The siphoner felt a hand on her back and something warm and light on her cheek, but it was gone before she could tell what it was. 

She turned around and hoped Jed hadn’t just kissed her on the cheek. If he had, well, the thought just made her sick to her stomach. Especially since she had no idea if they were truly dating or not. 

His words from the day before still confused her. Still haunted her. She wanted to ask about it, but Jed didn’t know that she didn’t have her memories. And she didn’t know what would happen if he learned the truth. 

“They _tolerated_ you,” Lizzie corrected. Josie tried not to shrug Jed off as he sat down next to her and threw his arm over her shoulder. “Your table manners were awful. I didn’t see you use a napkin once.” 

“Hey, I kept my elbows off the table _and_ I chewed with my mouth closed,” Jed said, looking a bit offended. 

“You can’t blame him, Liz,” the vampire Josie still hadn’t learned the name of spoke up. She joked, “He was raised by wolves.” 

Josie watched as she bit off the opening of her blood bag with her teeth and stuck it in her mouth. Whatever Jed said next to defend himself was lost on Josie. Her gaze lingered on the blood bag. 

It was _human_ blood. 

The hospital label on the bag was unmistakable. Josie just barely choked down a noise of surprise as she glanced at MG and saw him slurping down an identical one. 

The headmaster was giving students human blood? Her _father_ was giving students human blood? 

He had never dreamed of it back in her own world. Animal blood was his limit. It made Josie wonder. What had changed between this world and the other one that made up her father’s mind? 

The bell for first period rang and Josie tore her gaze away from the blood bag. It was empty, now. There was no need to stare. 

She hid a frown and stood up from the dining table. After bidding goodbye to her friends, narrowly avoiding another kiss on the cheek from Jed, and throwing her empty pudding cup away, she started in the direction of her first period class. 

It was just her luck that it was all the way on the other side of the school. When she finally got there, the Latin teacher was already standing by the door, welcoming students in. 

“Goodmorning, Miss Parker,” Ms. Gannon said as she passed her inside. She gave her a smile that looked more like a grimace than anything else. 

The smile fell the second she got into the classroom. She looked around and her heart dropped. 

It was impossible to tell which seat was hers. 

Stupid. That was what she was. To think that everything would go her way. 

Josie sighed and moved towards the back of the room. No. She wouldn’t freak out. Even if she just wanted to run away and hide herself all day. Everything was fine. 

She would have to wait for everyone else to sit down first, she thought. She would lean against the wall and pretend to be doing something on her phone, and then once everyone was seated, she would find the first empty chair and sit down. 

It didn’t quite work out that way. 

When it was all said and done, there were two empty seats left. One at the front of the room and one towards the back. 

The one at the front was next to a girl with braids and an eyebrow piercing. The one at the back was next to a boy who was picking his nose and wiping whatever he found in there underneath the desk. 

It was an easy decision. Josie shoved down the urge to throw up in her mouth and made her way over to the front. 

She hovered over the desk for a second, then two, then a third. She waited for the girl to give her a weird look, to do something to clue her in that this wasn’t her seat. But she didn’t. So, Josie waited even more. 

When the girl said nothing, she slowly pulled the chair out and sat down. Josie held her breath as she waited to be kicked out and told that she didn’t sit here, but no one said anything. 

She sighed and leaned back in her chair in relief. Ms. Gannon quickly started the lesson and handed out a white sheet of paper that listed some Latin vocabulary words she wanted everyone to study. 

When it reached her desk, Josie looked down at the paper. Thank God. It was a list of words she already knew, had already long memorized. The brunette spent the rest of class pretending to study them. 

She noticed that her seat partner was quiet. The other girl only spoke up towards the end of the period, and it was to ask if Josie was okay. 

“I know you have lots of friends, but I’m here,” she whispered, not making eye contact. “If you need to talk, I mean.” 

“Thank you.” Josie blushed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and meant it. 

Josie let herself relax as her first class came and passed. It was almost like there had been nothing to worry about. It had been easy, painfully easy, and over before she could blink twice.

Her next class—Supernatural History—was not so easy. 

This time, she didn’t have to wait for everyone to sit down to find out who her partner was. The girl waved her inside the second she saw her. She even pulled out her chair for her. 

“Josie!” the girl called, her smile so wide Josie was sure it was going to break her face. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.” 

She pulled Josie in for a hug before the siphoner could escape. Damn. She knew she would regret coming early. 

When the other girl finally let her go and stepped back, she asked, “Did you get the box of chocolates I sent you?”

The box of chocolates? 

_ Oh.  _

So _this_ was Jessica.

Josie stared at her for a few seconds before she blinked and forced herself to speak. 

“Yes,” the siphoner said quickly, very quickly. She tried to fight down the color rising to her cheeks. She really needed to stop fucking blushing over the tiniest of things. “Thank you. I loved it.” 

“You’re welcome,” Jessica told her as she sat down. “Are you feeling better?” 

Josie opened her mouth to lie before she realized that she didn’t need to. She _was_ actually feeling better. Feeling better than she had the day before, and much better than she had the day before that. 

Everything wasn’t perfect, and it never would be, but it was getting somewhere between there, and that was enough for Josie. 

“Yeah, I am,” she murmured, leaning back into her chair. She watched Jessica take her things out of her book bag and moved forward to do the same. Her own backpack was neat and organized, and it didn’t take very long to find a pen and a piece of paper. 

Then, more for herself, with just a hint of a barely-there smile on her lips, she added, “I am.” 

It was a few minutes later, after the warning bell rang, that Jessica nudged her elbow and lowered her voice. 

“Hey,” she whispered, though Josie didn’t know why. There were enough people talking in the classroom that it didn’t matter. “Don’t look now, but Marshall’s staring at you.” 

Josie’s heart skipped a beat, then another, until she was sure it stopped altogether. 

“What?” The siphoner could barely hear herself over the thundering of her blood rushing to her ears. Rushing everywhere. She knew her entire face was probably red. 

“She’s in this class?” This time, she didn’t even hear herself speak at all. She only knew it when Jessica answered. 

“Don’t tell me you _just_ noticed,” she said, before pausing. “Actually, of course you did. You didn’t even know my name until this semester.” 

Although the jibe came with a fond smile, Josie found that she didn’t like the way the other girl said that. As if it was normal for Josie Parker not to notice the people around her. As if she thought she was better than them and above learning their names. 

She decided to ignore it, for now. It was hard to focus on that when she could focus on Hope and her little staring problem instead. 

“And she’s...” Josie swallowed thickly, mouth dry. Throat tight. “... _Looking_ at me?” 

“Yeah,” Jessica said simply, like it was obvious. Josie fought to keep her head facing forward. “She’s been watching you ever since you sat down.” 

_Watching me?_ Josie pinked. She didn’t know if she was supposed to be flattered or excited by the fact, but a part of her liked knowing that Hope was as affected as she was. It wasn’t like the tribrid could say she wished Josie had drowned and then pay so much attention to her, right? 

Yes! Josie tried to convince herself. Hope hadn’t meant it! The siphoner had cried herself to sleep for no reason. No reason at all. 

Josie couldn’t help it. She turned around in her seat and her eyes darted to the other side of the room. Jessica was right. The moment she looked, her gaze met Hope’s own. 

“ _No_. Don’t look.” Jessica sighed. “Oh my God. What did I _just_ say?” 

Josie didn’t hear her. She was too busy looking at Hope. 

The tribrid’s eyebrows were drawn together and there was a flush to her cheeks that Josie hadn’t seen many times before, but everything else was the same. 

Hope was wearing the same outfit she wore everyday. It was so predictable of her. Josie smiled before she was fully aware of it or even realized what she was doing. Hope didn’t smile back. She swallowed and turned away. As if nothing happened. 

And nothing had. 

That was it. 

That would always be it. Hope Mikaelson was her friend. Not Hope Marshall. Josie Parker and Hope Marshall weren’t friends. There was a time where Josie thought they could have been more, but that was over, too. 

Josie turned back in her seat and shook off her partner’s lingering, curious gaze. It was none of Jessica’s business. It wasn’t Josie’s either. 

As the class started, she found her gaze wandering back to Hope. Once, then again. Until she was glancing at her every other minute. 

Hope never looked up, as if she knew Josie was watching and was forcing herself not to notice. Or maybe not. Maybe the brunette was reading too much into things. Maybe Hope Marshall didn’t think of her at all. 

Whatever. Her neck started to hurt from the weird angle so Josie just stopped. She decided that she needed to sit up and pay more attention to the teacher, Mr. Allegro. 

“...get going.” The man was leaning against his desk. “Please take out last week’s homework and pass it up to the front.” 

Josie reached for her backpack and went through her folders. She had six of them, all different shades of yellow and pink. When she found the one for this class, she opened it up and saw that it was all but empty except for a study guide packet. 

She didn’t know what last week’s homework was supposed to look like, so she chewed on her bottom lip and searched for it in all her other folders, too. She didn’t find anything that resembled Supernatural History at all. 

She was starting to get a little bit frantic. Missing homework always did stress her out more than it needed to. 

“Jo?” Jessica called, glancing at her with thinly-veiled concern. “Are you okay?” 

“I, uh, I can’t find my homework.” Josie didn’t think she even did it. If Josie Parker had, it wasn’t there. 

“Can you remind me what it’s supposed to look like?” she asked, hoping it didn’t sound too suspicious. If Jessica was confused, she didn’t show it.

“Sure,” she said, raising the sheet of paper in her hand for Josie to see. 

“Oh.” Josie gulped. “I don’t think I have that.” 

Jessica just laughed. 

“Don’t worry,” the other girl told her with a careless wave of her hand. “I’m sure you can just turn it in tomorrow. If Mister Allegro didn’t already favorite you enough, you have a pretty great excuse, anyway. He’ll probably give you full credit...” 

The door to the classroom swung open with a bang and a young boy rushed inside. It wasn’t until Jessica stopped talking and looked up did Josie see him. And immediately lose all her breath at the sight. 

The siphoner’s blood turned to ice in her veins. 

She recognized him. How could she not? She’d seen his face in her nightmares before. His scream of pain echoed in her ears almost every time she woke up. 

The boy was the quarterback from the Mystic Falls game. The one Josie had used dark magic on. The one whose arm she had broken. 

Josie blinked a few times as if she was just imagining things, but her eyes were clear and her hands were shaking and her head hurt and no amount of blinking could make the boy disappear. 

She watched as he closed the door behind him and smiled sheepishly at the teacher. 

“Mister Machado.” Mr. Allegro raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “You’re late.” 

The boy blushed. Josie’s eyes were drawn to his arm. It was okay. Uninjured. He didn’t look to be hurt or in pain. 

_He’s fine_ , Josie tried to convince herself. _He’s fine. Everything is fine._

“Sorry, sir,” the boy apologized. “I overslept.” 

Josie spun around in her seat. She couldn’t look at him. What if he looked back? She was sure her heart was going to beat its way out of her chest. 

Mr. Allegro sighed. “It’s okay. Just this once.” In a softer, kinder voice, he warned, “Don’t let it happen again, Ethan.” 

So that was his name. It made Josie feel even worse, to put a face to the name. _Ethan_. 

Was he the wolf Jed had mentioned the day before? The boy Josie Parker had given a tour of the school to? If so, did that make him a wolf in Josie’s own world? 

The siphoner felt the urge to get another glimpse of him and turned in her seat again. She looked on as he sat down next to Hope, but not before ruffling her hair with his fingers and grinning at her. 

The tribrid batted his hand away and smiled back, fixing her hair. Josie frowned. Hope hadn’t smiled back at her, why was Ethan any different? 

Josie’s frown deepened, but it wasn’t because she was jealous. No. She wasn’t jealous. Just, like, _friend_ jealous. Yeah. 

“As you all know,” Mr. Allegro spoke up again before Josie could agonize over it, “finals are coming up soon in May. For my class, you’ll be taking an assessment that evaluates your knowledge on everything we’ve learned this year. That’s a lot of material to review in two months, so with no time to waste, we’re going to get started now.” 

He grabbed a packet of papers off of his desk and turned back to the class. 

“Please turn to the first page of your study guides and chapter one in your textbooks,” he said. “Klaus Mikealson: The Great Evil.” 

On the other side of the room, Hope Marshall went rigid. 

“Born in our great town of Mystic Falls,” Mr. Allegro continued, “he grew up along humans, friends, family. None would be able to forsee the monster he would soon become.” 

Josie choked down a cough and glanced back over at Hope. She saw that the other girl had stiffened to the point that it looked painful. Her fingers were laid out flat against the desk, as if she was forcing herself to stay still. Her knuckles were white, her face just as pale, the set of her spine ramrod straight in her chair. 

“...Killing hundreds of thousands, one could reasonably argue even millions, of innocent people, all without remorse, some even for fun...”

Josie couldn’t see the tribrid’s eyes from this angle, not that it would have mattered. Hope stared straight down at the desk, like she was either trying to burn a hole into it or trying to distract herself from something else. Only Josie seemed to noticed the way her jaw clenched, the way her nose flared. The brunette didn’t think she was even breathing. 

“He spent a millennia living off the suffering of others and torturing them.” Josie begged the teacher to stop talking in her head. She begged him to shut up, begged her aching lungs to rest and her pounding heart to stop. None of them listened. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ethan ask Hope something. She couldn’t hear what it was, but the tribrid gave a stiff, jerked nod of her head and said nothing. 

“As we know it,” Mr. Allegro finished, “he dropped off the face of the earth over a decade ago. It makes one wonder if someone finally managed to kill him once and for all or if he’s simply in hiding, but all you guys have to know for the test is that he’s the first original hybrid and the greatest evil of our time.” 

Josie sucked in a breath. When she exhaled, she blurted out, “That’s not fair.” 

All heads turned to Josie. Jessica whipped her entire chair around in surprise. 

Fuck.

_ Fuck.  _

“Miss Parker?” 

She hadn’t meant to speak up. No, not at all. She instantly regretted it. What was she thinking? The easy answer was that she _hadn’t_ been. She just couldn’t bear to see the miserable look on Hope’s face for a single second longer. 

If Josie didn’t know Hope was a Mikaelson before, it was painfully clear, now. 

“Well,” Josie stammered awkwardly, “we’ve all done some questionable things in our lives—“ 

_A scream._ Smoke. A flash of darkness. Blood dripping down her hands. _A scream_. Down her face. A broken arm. _Stop screaming. Stop._

“—but that doesn’t make us bad people.” The siphoner gulped messily. “Why should we judge him for something we’re guilty of ourselves?” 

No one said anything. 

“I mean, the founders of this school aren’t all that innocent, either,” Josie babbled on, hoping that she was right. God, she hoped she didn’t sound absolutely crazy. “Our headmaster was a vampire hunter in his past life, now he teaches them. The man our library is named after was a ripper that killed just as many innocent people in cold blood.” 

“It just feels kind of...” What was the word? “... _Hypocritical_ of us to call him evil.” 

Mr. Allegro knitted his eyebrows together and nodded. 

“That’s an interesting perspective, Miss Parker,” he said thoughtfully. “Though, I must admit, I’m having some difficulty understanding your point.” 

He tilted his head to the side. 

“If not evil,” he asked, “then what would you call a man like Klaus Mikaelson?” 

Josie froze. She could feel Hope’s eyes on her, both harsh and soft at the same time, staring, glaring into the side of her head, looking right at her. 

“Lonely,” the siphoner told him, but she was trying hard not to look back at Hope. She just needed a minute, and the urge to look would go away, she was sure. “Monsters are made, not born. You said it yourself. He was the first hybrid, the only one of his time. He grew up ostracized by most of his family for being different, singled out by his abusive father. His own mother turned against him. Those around him considered him a freak. An abomination. If anything, he was just a product of his environment.” 

No. She needed Hope to _understand_. She needed the girl to know that she wasn’t alone. That her father wasn’t the awful person everyone had made him out to be. 

That his love for his daughter saved the both of them. 

“No, I wouldn’t call him a monster at all.” She knew why she did it, then, when she turned in her chair and met Hope’s eyes. She was startled by what she saw. So many different emotions. She couldn’t catch a single one. “I think he was just misunderstood.” 

Mr. Allegro cleared his throat. Josie blushed and turned back around. The rest of the class hadn’t seemed to miss their moment, either. A few quiet murmurs had begun to whisper across the room. 

“While that does not justify the lives that were cruelly taken, Miss Parker,” the teacher raised his voice to be heard, “I can see your point.”

“There is one thing, though,” he added, narrowing his eyes in contemplation. “The part about him having an abusive father?” 

He flipped through the pages of the packet in his hand, but came up with nothing. “That wasn’t in the reading nor the study guide. May I ask where you came by that information?” 

Shit. 

Josie shrugged and tried to pull off an innocent smile. 

“Just a little bit of independent research,” she told him. “I’m sure you could find it somewhere in the library’s archives.” 

Her face burned hot. She wouldn’t mention how she had _actually_ come by that information. 

(By begging her mother for stories of Klaus Mikaelson after she had found out that Hope was his daughter. Nope. She wouldn’t mention that _at all_.)

Mr. Allegro seemed to accept that answer and moved onto the rest of his lesson. When the bell finally rang, Josie was the first one out of the door. Jessica was close to follow her. 

The siphoner didn’t even glance in Hope’s direction on her way out. She didn’t think her heart would be able to take it.

“What was that back there?” Jessica asked, nodding her head in the other direction as they walked down the hallway. “With Marshall?” 

“You mean Hope?” Josie pressed her lips together and tried to hold onto the warmth the name left inside her mouth. “I don’t know.” 


	9. Chapter 9

** Gemini Coven, A History  **

Josie stared at the book in front of her and sighed. She couldn’t bring herself to open it. 

A week had passed since that first day of school. 

Things didn’t get better, though Josie was a fool for hoping that they would. She thought that she’d be able to pretend she was someone else, but every passing second proved that she was very, very wrong. 

Just a week, and she had already failed a test in one of her classes. Not because she didn’t know the material, but because she couldn’t remember it. Sure, she could faintly recall learning the information itself, but that was years ago. She was a seventeen-year-old taking a fifteen-year-old’s classes. She should have been doing better, but she wasn’t. 

Surprisingly enough, or maybe not surprisingly _at all_ , that wasn’t her biggest problem. 

As it turned out, the news of her drowning incident passed as quickly as it had come, and the thrum of gossip went with it. People stopped asking about what happened, but they made it clear to Josie that they still cared. 

She figured it made sense. In a school for the supernatural and extraordinary, something mundane like drowning could only hold their attention for so long. There were a few people that still bothered to ask her if she was okay, her sister being one of them. 

When they weren’t in class, the blonde visited her all the time, under the pretense of bringing late-night snacks and talking about boys. That meant she had to keep up the act of dating Jed. 

She still wasn’t sure if they were actually dating. He hadn’t said anything weird all week like he had on Sunday, but then again, the two hardly talked. Whenever they were together, they did more making out than anything else. 

The first time Jed kissed her, Josie had singed his eyebrows off with a fire spell. It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected it—it was that she hadn’t expected to _like_ it. 

He didn’t shove his tongue down her throat like she thought he would, and he never went further than moving his lips lightly against hers. There was a slight stubble on his chin that scratched her, but only a little bit, so she didn’t really mind. 

It made her feel normal. 

Less lonely. 

Most of the time, they made out in Josie’s room. Well, all of the time. They never kissed if Alyssa fucking Chang wasn’t there to walk in on them and catch the couple in the act. It made Josie suspicious every time he’d pull her into a kiss, but she let him take the lead and stayed quiet. 

Josie decided that she wasn’t going to ruin someone else’s relationship, even if it meant putting herself second. If Josie Parker was okay with it, the siphoner convinced herself, then Josie Saltzman would find a way to be okay with it, too. Though, she definitely wasn’t okay with the hurt that flashed across Alyssa’s face every time she caught them. 

She hated it. God, she _hated_ it.

She wasn’t expecting to, either. 

In her old world, she had never liked Alyssa. She was cruel and Josie didn’t understand why, so she never tried to learn. _This_ Alyssa was different. No, that wasn’t quite right. She was the same, but Josie now got to see parts of her that she hadn’t been able to even _glimpse_ before. 

She got to see her without her mask, without make-up, wearing pajamas before they went to bed. It made her look a lot younger. Josie got to see her as a student, not some mean bully. 

The only person that the siphoner was truly grateful for right now was Alyssa. She didn’t push Josie into being okay, nor did she ever ask. Sometimes she was rude, but Josie found herself liking it. At the very least, she could tell that Alyssa was _trying_. 

The only person in the school who didn’t seem to care about trying was Hope Marshall. She didn’t seem to care about Josie _at all_. For some odd reason, it hurt. 

The tribrid stayed away, as if she knew Josie wanted to confront her about what happened. As if she was scared Josie would remember. Unless they were in Supernatural History class together, the siphoner would never find herself in the same room as Hope Marshall. At least, not for more than a few seconds. In classes, in the dining room, in the hallways, she would catch Josie’s eye before turning away.  


The tribrid was avoiding her, and hell, Josie let her. 

On the other hand was Penelope Park, staring at Josie as if begging her to look at her, too. And, hell, if she didn’t stare just as hard when no one was looking. Penelope was... _weird_.

It was better, when she was thousands of miles away in a different world and Josie could pretend that she didn’t exist. But now, she saw her every day, and she could no longer pretend that she wasn’t affected by it. Couldn’t pretend that she didn’t still feel the way her lips felt against hers. 

God, she couldn’t get the last time they had kissed out of her head, and not her lips, either. The taste of them, salty from the tears running down their faces as they cried. She wondered if Penelope’s lips would taste like that if they kissed again, or if it would be different without their tears. 

The truth was, Josie missed her like she would have never thought possible. She knew she didn’t have any feelings left for her, but her heart refused to fall in line and ached for something familiar. 

_Anything_ familiar. 

The siphoner shook her head and looked back at the book in front of her. She willed herself to turn to the first page. Josie couldn’t. 

She sat up in the chair she was sitting in and looked around. She was in the main hall of the school, her homework laid out in front of her. It was late enough at night that Josie was the only person here. 

She had never done her homework in the hall before. Why was she here, again? 

Oh. Right. 

_ Josie sat down at her desk with her book bag, making herself comfortable in her chair. Her first day of classes had finally ended and she was relieved. She scooted forward in her seat and started to get her homework out, when a voice behind her forced her to stop.  _

_ “What are you doing?” Alyssa asked, from the other side of the room.  _

_ Josie turned her head over her shoulder, afraid to say the wrong thing. She glanced nervously at her roommate and mumbled, “Homework?”  _

_ It came out like a question. She had to stop herself from visibly cringing.  _

_ Alyssa frowned. She was playing with the tie of her uniform, like she couldn’t quite get it the way she wanted. “...in here?”  _

_ She paused, then added, “You usually do it in the hall with your friends.”  _

_ “Oh.” Josie let a few seconds of silence fill the space between them. She glanced over a second time and saw that Alyssa was still having trouble with her tie.  _

_ She hesitated, before asking, “Do you, um, need help?”  _

_ Alyssa scoffed. “Very funny,” she snarked, waving her hand to fix her problem with magic. The knot of her tie flopped limply once, twice, then did nothing. The witch’s frown deepened.  _

_ “I wasn’t joking,” Josie said quietly. She bit her lip and glanced over again. This time, their eyes caught.  _

_ Alyssa stepped back. Her cheeks flushed a faint pink color and she looked away, removing the crooked tie from around her neck.  _

_ “Whatever. It doesn’t match my outfit.”  _

_ Josie nodded without looking. She pretended not to notice the way Alyssa’s eyes lingered on the tie long after she took it off.  _

That afternoon, she learned that Josie Parker did her homework in the main hall and not alone in her room. The girl was a very social person, and preferred to do her work in the company of others. 

That brought her to the present, sitting in the main hall of the school and staring at a book she couldn’t summon the courage to open. She had been doing this for the past few hours. 

Right after school ended, she had rushed to the library, checking out the first book on the Gemini Coven she could find. She then came straight here to do her homework with her friends. When her homework was done, her friends all gone, and she could no longer stall, she was left with the book. 

The siphoner shook her head and looked back at that _damn_ thing in front of her. She willed herself to turn to the first page. She couldn’t. 

She yawned and covered her mouth, leaning back into her chair. It was comfortable. She shut her eyes and lost herself in the dark, closer and closer to falling asleep as the seconds passed. 

Then, she heard footsteps. It wasn’t the first time this week that she had heard them. They were even starting to become _familiar_. 

She sleepily blinked her eyes open and sat up a little straighter, catching sight of a head of auburn hair disappearing through the main exit doors of the school. The owner didn’t once look back. 

Josie waited until the doors shut behind the person before she stood up. She knew without a doubt that it was Hope Marshall. This was the seventh night the tribrid had left at this time. 

The siphoner snuck a glance at her phone. Just as she thought. It was nearing midnight. And again, Hope was leaving the school. Josie was sure that it was the tribrid. 

No one else had auburn hair like Hope, and no one else would have walked by Josie Parker without going out of their way to greet her. Without even _glancing_ in her direction. 

The only way out of the school was through the main hall. The siphoner knew Hope would have taken a different path if she could, but she was forced to walk by Josie to get outside. 

And Josie was fucking _annoyed_. They had gone an entire week without talking. An entire week of Josie watching Hope leave the school at odd hours in the night and return at even _odder_ hours in the night. 

It was time to follow her. 

Out of curiosity, that was all. 

She let the tribrid get a thirty-second head start before following her outside the school, several steps back so that she wouldn’t get caught. 

She watched as Hope led her to the woods near the school, and disappeared somewhere within the treeline. Like a dumbass, Josie continued to follow her. 

She noticed that the woods were dark, and they looked, well, _scary_. The siphoner gulped and hugged herself a little tighter. Damn. It was kind of cold, too. 

Maybe she had made a bad decision, she thought. What if Hope was just shifting into her wolf or something? 

_ Huh.  _

Josie looked around and saw nothing. She couldn’t hear anything either. No footsteps. Just crickets. Hope had somehow disappeared in her distraction. She turned her head from side to side, but she still couldn’t see where the other girl had gone. 

Where did she— 

Suddenly, Josie found herself thrown against a tree, her wrists pinned over her head. Hope Marshall’s face hovered directly in front of her own, her teeth bared and her eyes dark. They flashed yellow for just a second. Josie didn’t think the tribrid even noticed. 

“Why the hell are you following me?” Hope bit out, and God, she was so close that Josie could feel their bodies almost pressed together. 

Worse, maybe, was that Hope didn’t even need to use both hands to restrain her. She kept Josie in place with a single hand gripping both her wrists.  


The other hand dug into the bark of the tree. Josie glanced down and noticed that her nails were sharp and pointed, something they hadn’t been before. They looked like they were piercing the wood. Josie didn’t think the tribrid even noticed _that_ either. 

Hope tightened her grip. “Answer me.” 

The siphoner trapped her bottom lip between her teeth and whimpered, low and needy in a way that made her blush. Hope just leaned in closer as she waited for an explanation, her eyes flashing between Josie’s eyes and...her lips? 

The tribrid moved closer. Again. Josie wondered if Hope was going to kiss her. Then, she wondered if she _wanted_ her to. 

Josie could barely speak. Like the stupid mess that she was, she found herself leaning into the other girl’s warm touch instead of away. It just made Hope hold her back against the tree even harder. 

“ _Answer me_ ,” the tribrid repeated angrily, and Josie knew it would be for the last time. 

She forced herself to look anywhere else, needing to stop the blush rising up her neck. If she saw the way Hope kept glancing at her lips for a second longer, she knew her knees would buckle and she’d trip over herself. She dropped her eyes and gulped. 

“You’re wearing your leather jacket,” she blurted out. She hadn’t noticed before. It must have been for the cold, Josie thought. The reminder made her shiver. She forgot to slip a jacket on before following Hope. 

“Uh...” The hold Hope had on her wrists slackened. Just a little. The tribrid’s eyes darted wildly around, like she was unsure of what she was doing. 

“Yeah.” She glanced down, as if to check. “I think so.” 

Josie was in a trance. Her mind stuck in the past. It was unforgiving. 

“You haven’t worn it in a while,” she murmured softly. It was true. At least, Josie hadn’t seen Hope wear the jacket in a while. Well, Hope _Mikaelson_. 

Hope Marshall wore the leather jacket up until her parents died, usually over her uniform. Like Hope was now. She looked so pretty. 

“I...” Hope knitted her eyebrows together in confusion. After a few seconds, she seemed to get herself together, but she didn’t release Josie. “What do you mean?” 

Her eyes flickered up and down again. She cleared her throat. “Why are you here?” 

Josie scrambled for a lie. 

“I just...” Her voice sounded weak, she knew it. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.” 

Hope finally released her and sighed. Josie realized that she’d been holding her breath. 

“You said that last time,” Hope told her. 

Josie blinked. Should she act like she knew what Hope was talking about, or be honest instead? This entire week, she had been pretending that she had her memories back. 

She couldn’t anymore. She knew it. Hope knew it. When it was clear that Josie couldn’t remember whatever _last time_ was or meant, Hope cleared her throat and spoke up again. 

“I mean...” Hope swallowed. Her voice was soft. Any trace of the gold Josie had seen before in her eyes was gone. She suddenly looked so different. Tame. Fragile, almost. Like all the fight had left her the second she heard Josie’s words. “You never cared before.” 

She put her hands in the pockets of her jacket, but Josie doubted it was because she was cold. She wondered if Hope was nervous, but she didn’t get to think about it for very long. 

It was only when Hope took a step back and gave her space, that the pain registered. All over her back, like pins and needles, stabbing away at her skin. She let out a hiss of pain and her hand went to clutch reflexively at her back. Right where the wounds from last week’s claw marks were. 

The injury had scabbed over since then, but Josie knew the healing was for nothing now. Damn. She hoped it wouldn’t scar. When Hope pressed her up against the tree, the bark of the wood had probably ripped the scabs back open.  


She should have worn a thicker shirt, but it was clear to her that Josie Parker didn’t have any. Just ones with thin, see-through material. An extra layer of lace, if she was lucky. 

“Oh.” Hope’s face fell. Her voice was a whisper. It almost sounded like concern. “Did I hurt you?” 

“No,” Josie hurried to reassure her. She barely stopped another whimper from escaping her throat. “It’s just my back. I hurt it the other day.” 

Hope sniffed the air. “You’re bleeding.” 

Josie turned her head over her shoulder and rolled her eyes, knowing that Hope wouldn’t be able to see it. Sniffing like a dog? Sometimes the tribrid was _so_ obvious. She really needed to do better if she wanted to keep her secret. 

She turned back to Hope and raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like the tribrid could see through clothes. And she wasn’t _supposed_ to be able to see through the dark. 

“How can you tell?” she asked, fighting off a smirk. It distracted her from the pain. 

Hope froze. Josie saw the exact moment that she realized her mistake. 

“I...” Hope trailed off, looking around for the answer. Josie waited, but the words didn’t come. Her back started to throb again. 

“Magic,” Hope blurted out suddenly. She nodded her head along, pushing her hands back into her pockets. “Yeah. I did a spell.” 

Josie resisted the urge to roll her eyes even harder. How hadn’t she seen it before? How hadn’t she noticed that Hope Marshall was a tribrid back in her own world sooner? 

“I don’t suppose you did a spell to make your eyes look yellow, too,” the siphoner muttered underneath her breath, more for herself than for Hope, if she was being honest. 

The tribrid obviously still heard it. Josie could tell when she went even more rigid than before. 

“Yellow? No,” she tried to argue, but her nervous laughter gave her away. “My eyes are blue.” 

“O-kay,” Josie said slowly, deciding to just pretend that she believed her. Plus, she was still hurting and in pain. She stretched her arm behind her and ran her hand over the cuts on her back. Her fingers came away with blood. 

“I think you’re right,” she spoke again, after a few seconds. 

Hope looked up from where she’d been staring at her feet. It was obvious that she had lost track of their conversation. 

“About my eyes?” she asked. 

Josie almost laughed. This was a _very_ different girl than the one that had pinned her to the tree and growled at her. This girl was scared. Josie wanted to tell Hope that she knew her secret and would never share it with anyone, but she couldn’t.It would scare her off even more. 

“No,” Josie ended up saying. Surprisingly, she didn’t giggle once. A soft smile curved her lips despite the pain. “I think I’m bleeding.” 

She turned around and faced Hope with her back, sweeping her hair over to the front. Part of her just wanted to see the other girl’s reaction. She wanted to know if Hope recognized the cuts, if she knew more than she let on about what happened that night at the lake. 

“Can you check for me?” the siphoner asked, still facing away. 

Hope didn’t respond, but Josie could feel her come up behind her. The leaves of the forest floor cracked underneath her feet and her breath hitched. Josie swore she could feel her shaky exhale on the skin of her back. 

“Yeah,” Hope said, a little breathless. “You’re bleeding.” 

Josie bit her lip. It hurt this time. Her lips were cracked and chewed raw. All this biting and she had made herself a habit. 

“I...” Hope started slowly. Funny. Josie had thought she was cold a few minutes ago. Now she felt hot and flushed. Almost as if she was burning from the inside out. “I can heal it, if you want?” 

Josie thought about that. She was hesitant to use magic, after the darkness. So far, she had only used it when she deemed it completely necessary. And never to make herself feel better. It wasn’t like she _deserved_ it. 

But if it was Hope and not her, then technically Josie wasn’t using magic. Right? 

Right. 

Josie nodded her permission to Hope, as if she didn’t care one way or the other. It couldn’t have been further from the truth, and she had never been a very good liar. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She was sure Hope could hear it. 

When she spoke, her voice was soft. Shaky. 

“Sure.”

The longer Hope took to make a move, the harder Josie breathed. Then, she could feel it. Fingertips brushing over her back. Setting every nerve on fire. Josie wanted to scream. From pain. Relief. She didn’t know. 

A whispered spell, and then the ghost of Hope’s touch was gone. The pain went with it. Josie couldn’t tell if she liked that or not. 

Hope stayed still behind her. A tree rustled in the breeze. The siphoner slowly turned around. It was darker than black, but she could see the emotion in Hope’s eyes clear as light. 

Guilt. 

It was guilt. 

“I-I need to go,” Hope stammered out, but she didn’t turn to leave. 

Josie clenched her eyes shut and looked away. Her fingers twitched, but she didn’t reach out. She felt disappointed. “Go.” 

In a flash, Hope was gone. 

And then Josie was left alone in the woods by herself. Before she could blink twice or even think to call the other girl back. 

Josie let out the breath she’d been holding and went straight back to the main hall. It took only minutes to reach the school. She needed answers, she knew. She had been avoiding reading that damn book until now, fearing what she would find. But she no longer had a choice. She couldn’t live like this. 

  
Not anymore. 

When the siphoner reached the chair she had been sitting in earlier, she pulled the book into her lap and opened it to the first chapter. 

** The Gemini Coven is a powerful coven of witches that have survived for centuries. They are infamous for their part in the creation of Prison Worlds (more on these planes of life in chapter 7, page 85). While the coven originally lived in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the last living descendants moved to Mystic Falls, Virginia in 2013, where they have resided for the past two decades.  **

Josie skipped down a few paragraphs. She already knew all of that. 

** While members of the Gemini Coven are most commonly known for their creation of the Prison Worlds previously mentioned above, they also have an affinity for cloaking and elemental spells. All witch covens differ from one another through specialization of skills and traditions. The anomaly that sets the Geminis apart? An ancient ritual termed the Merge.  **

Josie was momentarily surprised. 

This was one of the first books she had found from the library, yet it offered information on the Merge so freely. Back in her own world, she had needed to beg her father for information. In the name of protecting his children, he had hid every book even _mentioning_ the Merge. 

The siphoner scoffed. He hadn’t protected them. He had only blinded them. 

** The Merge is essentially a test of strength and power used to appoint a new leader of the coven. If not for this ceremony, the Gemini Coven would go extinct. Should the current leader of the Gemini Coven perish before a new leader can be selected, all members will die along with them. More on page 32. **

Josie turned to page thirty-two. 

** Like all rituals, the Merge has its own history and rules. It would not be a long-lived tradition without them. To start, the ceremony can only occur between a set of twins or relatives of the same age. It takes place when two Gemini twins reach the age of twenty-two, but only if they are first in line as leaders. If a leader has already been established within the coven, there is no need for the twins to Merge. The Merge itself begins with both twins chanting the spell for the ritual (the Gemini Coven have refused to share the incantation at this time).  **

Josie rolled her eyes and kept reading.

** The twins must then split the skin of their palms, allowing their blood to be shared through holding hands. Their blood will connect their sources of magic as one so that they can channel each other’s powers. The stronger twin will then absorb the life energy and magic of the weaker twin, becoming twice as strong and coming out of the ceremony both victorious and alive. The weaker twin will die shortly after the ritual ends.  **

Josie skipped a few paragraphs down again. She knew this stuff, too. She couldn’t stomach hearing it again. The fact that she’d done this with Lizzie and wasn’t even there for it made vomit rise in her throat. 

**The current leader of the Gemini Coven is Lucas Parker. Before him, his father Joshua Parker led the coven. Joshua won his own Merge in the 1970s, birthing eight children in the years to come. His eldest son, Malachai Parker, was soon discovered to be different than the rest of his siblings. In his early childhood, his family realized that he had no magic of his own. He was a siphoner, a rare witch born without the power to produce their own magic.**

**Siphoners are characterized by having the ability to draw magic from those around them but not themselves. These types of witches are thought to be unnatural. Growing up, Malachai was rejected from his coven for being an abomination. After killing four of his siblings in revenge, Malakai was sent to a Prison World as punishment.**

** In time, he was able to escape. With the Merge on his mind, he soon sought out his twin sister, Josette Parker. Josette agreed to Merge with him. Before they could finish the ceremony, their brother Lucas Parker stepped in. Since Malachai was trapped in the Prison World for so long, Lucas believed that they were now the same age. **

** He took Josette’s place in the ritual and managed to overpower Malachai, taking his brother’s life energy for himself and killing Malachai in the process.  **

Josie raised her eyebrows. Her throat felt closed up. Malachai was...dead? He had lost the Merge in this world? 

** While Lucas gained his ability to siphon magic and advanced his own power, he also started to develop some of Malachai’s personality traits, such as his vile thoughts, his destructive behavior, and his sociopathy.  **

Josie massaged her tight throat and frowned. Uncle Luke definitely hadn’t shown any signs of being a sociopath in the two times she had seen him. 

**Lucas tried to get this new side of him under control, but it grew difficult for him. As time passed, he continued to struggle with himself and his intrusive thoughts. A year after the Merge, his sister Josette revealed to him that she was pregnant with twins. On the night of her due date, Lucas had a psychotic break. He attempted to kill his sister and her two daughters, but he only succeeded in seriously injuring them. At the time, the Gemini Coven was unsure if Josette would survive. In order** **to honor her, the father of her daughters named one after Josette. (It is important to note that the identity of this man has not yet been disclosed.)**

Damn. 

**Upon birth, the twins were both revealed to be siphoners. Their mother did not exile them like her father did to his own son before her, and instead she embraced them into the coven.**

A tear dropped on the page, blurring the letters together. With a start, Josie realized that she was crying. 

**Lucas made sure that the Parker twins were well taken care of within the coven and apologized countlessly for what happened. In an interview, he admitted that he still feels guilty over it. Josette soon understood that it was not his fault and came to forgive him. Within the next few years, Lucas was able to get that part of himself under control.**

** He remains the Gemini Coven leader to this day. When his time is over, the responsibility to Merge and select a new leader will fall on his siblings, not the Parker twins. It is crucial to understand that both girls are siphoners and do not have their own powers. In theory, it is impossible for them to draw magic from each other if it doesn’t exist. In order to undergo a complicated ceremony such as the Merge, they would have to have magic of their own. Since they do not, it is impossible for them to take part in the Merge.  **

Josie’s fingers trembled around the spine of the book. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t even understand it. The words wouldn’t register in her head. 

**There is only one possible way the Parker twins could Merge: if one twin takes enough dark magic into their body, the magic can keep itself alive. Dark magic is a power source on its own. Unlike regular magic, it can linger for far longer if siphoned and taken into the body.**

Another tear dropped onto the page. Then one more, until suddenly the entire page was blurred over. Josie could only read the last few lines before they were drowned with her tears, too. 

** That being said, if the Parker twins do not Merge, the entire Gemini Coven will perish, unless a loophole is discovered. **

Josie dropped the book into her lap. Her chest was shaking, lungs racking with deep shudders. 

_We didn’t even have to Merge? I killed Lizzie for nothing?_

No. No. She _hadn’t_. It was just another thing that had changed from the other world to this one. Just another change. 

She tried to convince herself, but her hands were shaking and glowing red in contact with whatever she touched and the chair underneath her was shaking, too, and the floor was shaking and then the entire room was shaking and her eyes were falling shut and—

Josie collapsed into the chair and passed out. 

The book fell to the floor. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you were wondering, i basically searched up all the info on the merge. the show did a shit job of explaining all their plotholes so im not gonna help them lol


	10. Chapter 10

Josie woke up to someone shaking her. The room was still spinning. She couldn’t tell if it was because of her pounding headache or just the room. She wondered how much time had passed. 

“Parker.” The voice was familiar. It took Josie a few seconds to realize that it was coming from Alyssa Chang. “Parker, _wake_ _up_.” 

The siphoner sat up in her chair with a jolt, the tips of her fingers buzzing. Every inch of her skin was inflamed, scrubbed raw with power. She felt exhausted. It was only when she stood up that everything around her stopped shaking. The red glow to her hands vanished. 

She hoped Alyssa hadn’t noticed. 

Luckily, it didn’t seem that she had. At all. The other girl’s eyes were on the ceiling, as if she was expecting it to cave in and collapse above them any second. 

“There was an earthquake or something,” Alyssa told her, without looking at her. She didn’t sound frantic, not exactly, but something close to it. “I woke up and you weren’t in your bed. I thought—I just couldn’t find you.” 

Josie glanced around. 

All the furniture in the main hall was scattered out of place, the chair she had been sitting in now backed into a corner. There was a crack in the ceiling and a few paintings on the walls were close to falling, swinging back and forth dangerously. The siphoner swallowed hard and looked away, unable to bear it. 

_Oh, God_ , she thought. _Was this my fault?_

She turned back to Alyssa and steeled herself. 

“You were looking for me?” Josie asked, knitting her eyebrows together. No one ever looked for her unless they needed something. “Why?” 

Alyssa froze, like she wasn’t expecting the question. Josie wasn’t sure, but she thought that her face looked even paler than before. 

“I wasn’t,” Alyssa said, her emotionless mask slipping back into place. 

But Josie had caught the fear in her voice when Alyssa had woken her up, the brief flash of panic in her eyes, the flush to her cheeks. 

“You were worried,” the siphoner realized slowly, voice soft and almost breathless. Alyssa crossed her arms over her chest defensively and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You care about me.” 

The other girl scoffed, but the pink tint to her cheeks gave her away. 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she told Josie with a roll of her eyes, trying to save face. The siphoner saw right through it. “I was only worried the headmaster would find some way to blame me if anything happened to you.” 

Josie didn’t believe a single word. She smiled gently. “Sure.” 

Alyssa glared at her. “I’m not lying—“ 

“Good evening, all students and staff.” The overhead intercom came on and cut Alyssa off. Josie went still, instantly recognizing her father’s voice. 

Her father that was no longer her father. Damn it. She needed to get used to that somehow. Just until she got back to her own world, she told herself. 

“This is your Headmaster Alaric Saltzman speaking,” the man said. “I know it’s late and you’re all scared, but please report to the main hall as quickly and as _calmly_ as possible. Thank you.” 

The intercom went out with a screech, leaving Josie and Alyssa to stare at each other in the static of the silence.

“Why do you think he called a meeting?” Josie asked after a few seconds. The back of her neck felt hot. She was sure that she was sweating. 

A constant littany of _fuck, fuck, fuck_ flew through her head. What had she done? What had she done? What had she done? What had she—

“Look around you,” Alyssa snarked, pointing out the obvious. Josie winced as an oil painting fell off the wall next to them and hit the floor. “Why do you think?” 

Josie didn’t reply to that. Her throat had started to close up. She found herself out of breath, mind reeling with what she couldn’t, wouldn’t understand. 

_ Oh, God. What had she done?  _

Within minutes, younger and older students alike started to fill the room. They were all still in their pajamas. Before long, the main hall was crowded with people. 

“Josie!” The siphoner turned around, her eyes landing on her sister, who was storming towards her. Lizzie immediately swept her into her arms. 

“Hey.” The blonde squeezed tight, sighing in relief. She let go and stepped away before Josie could hug her back. “You weren’t answering your phone. Are you okay?” 

“Yeah.” Josie nodded, trying to get rid of the bitter taste in her mouth. It didn’t work. “You?”

“Mhmm,” Lizzie hummed, finally taking a look at the damage around them. She turned back to Josie and lowered her voice. “That couldn’t have been an earthquake, right? I don’t know, it just _screamed_ supernatural to me. Do you think someone here caused it?” 

“Oh.” Josie pinked. 

She couldn’t let anyone know that whatever had caused the school to start shaking might have been her fault. She knew that it would make everyone suspicious of her, and that was the last thing she needed right now. 

“I don’t know, Lizzie...” Josie trailed off unsurely, but the blonde wasn’t paying her any attention. She was glaring at the girl next to her.

Alyssa. 

“It was _you_ , wasn’t it?” Lizzie asked the other witch, narrowing her eyes. 

“No,” Josie said quickly, but she didn’t know if she was defending Alyssa or herself. “We’ve been together this whole time. We don’t know what happened either.” 

Alyssa gave her a weird look and tilted her head to the side. Josie fought to keep down the dark blush rising up her neck. Hopefully the other girl thought that she was trying to cover for _her_ , rather than for _herself_. 

Somehow, Josie knew that this was all her fault—that she was the only one to blame for what happened. Even if it hadn’t been on purpose. 

“Fine,” Lizzie relented after a long moment of shooting daggers at Alyssa. “If you say so.” 

“It was probably Marshall, anyway,” the blonde added with a shrug, not bothering to keep her voice down. Josie raised her eyebrows. “She throws a temper tantrum every other week.” 

A sharp, bitter laugh sounded behind them, cutting like glass in their ears. Josie felt her heart drop and cringed. 

“That’s funny coming from you,” the voice belonging to the laugh said, appearing as if out of nowhere. 

All three girls turned around. 

Josie swore her breath caught, or maybe she had long since stopped breathing. It took everything in her not to trip over herself as her eyes landed on Hope Marshall. Then, _again_ , when she noticed the boy next to her. 

Ethan Machado. 

“I mean,” Hope drawled lazily, “I’m not the one who destroyed the football field last month because she wanted to be a sore loser.” 

The tribrid was no longer wearing her school uniform and the leather jacket Josie had seen her in earlier, but a pair of sweats instead. The pants were a little big on her, and she had rolled the waistband down so that a pale strip of the skin of her abdomen was left exposed. 

Josie tore her eyes away and forced them on the floor. Maybe then her heart would listen to her and stop beating so loudly. She could barely hear what Lizzie was saying over the sound of it pounding in her ears. 

“Only because your team cheated,” Lizzie shot back with an angry huff. She glanced at her sister and gestured pointedly. “You were there. Tell her, Jo.” 

All heads turned to the brunette. Josie gulped messily. 

That was one of the first things she had learned about Josie Parker. The reason the girl was so popular and well-liked was because of her honesty. Her word was her bond, and she never let anyone walk over her or tell her differently. 

In that way, she was very unlike Josie Saltzman. 

The siphoner felt herself burn underneath their expectant gazes. One pair of eyes in particular had her stomach clenching.  


Ethan. 

Until now, she had been able to avoid him. It was a very hard thing to do. He was _everywhere_. He never left Jed’s side, as if he was glued to the other boy or something. His loyalty was both annoying and endearing. It only made Josie feel even worse for what she had done to him. 

And now he was looking right at her and she couldn’t escape him. 

“I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding?” Josie mumbled, barely meeting anyone’s eyes. The words came out like a question and, this time, she couldn’t hide her blush. 

Both Hope and Lizzie opened their mouths to argue at the same time, but Ethan got there first. 

“I agree with Josie,” he said, smiling. He placed a hand on Hope’s shoulder and tried to pull her back. “Come on, Hope. Let’s find somewhere to sit.” 

Hope nodded and let him drag her away, but not without pinning Josie with one last look. The siphoner could barely make any sense of it. She wondered if Hope was trying to tell her something, but she knew deep down that she was just imagining things.

Lizzie huffed as they were finally left alone. 

“I _hate_ her,” the blonde said, still glaring at the back of Hope’s head. “She knows I’ve been trying to impress Ethan, too. I can’t believe she said that right in front of him.” 

“Ethan?” Josie raised her eyebrows in surprise and shared a meaningful look with Alyssa. 

_That_ was a new development. No wonder the blonde had been mentioning him a lot lately. Maybe Josie had just been too much in her own head to notice. 

“He’s so cute.” Lizzie’s eyes took on that weird, dreamy look they so often did when she talked about boys. “And strong. His arms are _so_ sexy. I wonder why he hasn’t challenged Jed for alpha yet.” 

_What does that have to do with being alpha?_ Josie thought in her head. 

“Ugh.” Lizzie seemed not to notice her sister’s confusion. She screwed her face up in annoyance and rolled her eyes. “Speak of the devil. Your guard dog is coming over here right now.” 

Josie immediately looked up, waving at her boyfriend before she could get her hands to keep still. She realized that she had been doing that a lot recently—acting on impulses she had no memory of and had never been affected by before. 

They came to her in her dreams, flashes of memories and moments she had never lived herself. When she woke up, the imprint of the dreams remained in her head, even as the memories didn’t last. 

It was this reason that she somehow knew things without _truly_ knowing them. She knew that Jed didn’t like the smell of chlorine and preferred to stay away from water. She knew that he liked being the little spoon when they cuddled and that he didn’t like to kiss with tongue. Josie should have been more worried, that she knew these things without ever learning them or experiencing them herself, but somehow she had convinced herself that she didn’t care. 

“Hey.” Jed dipped down to kiss her on the cheek. He glanced between Josie and her sister. “You girls okay?” 

They both told him that they were fine and he smiled in relief. Josie wasn’t so happy. She looked around and realized that Alyssa had disappeared. It made her frown. 

Why had she left so quickly? 

The siphoner shook her head and decided that she had enough things to worry about already. 

She glanced over, noticing what Jed was wearing for the first time. He had a plain grey t-shirt on, but his pajama pants were a different story. They were dark blue and Scooby Doo themed, with mini dogs and sandwiches patterned all over them. 

“Cute,” the siphoner commented, a small grin playing at her lips. Jed looked down at himself and sighed. 

“I didn’t have time to change,” he told her, a faint blush adorning his cheeks. “I slept through the earthquake and Ethan woke me up screaming fire. That fucker. He’s out of his mind if he thinks I’m not gonna get him back....” 

His words fell away as Josie caught a glimpse of Hope Marshall talking to her father on the other side of the room. They whispered in hushed voices for a few more seconds before Hope nodded and stepped back. 

She moved her hands in front of her and Josie watched as the other girl’s lips parted with a spell incantation. The room slowly started to restore itself to how it had been before. 

The crack in the ceiling disappeared. The paintings on the walls stopped swinging back and forth. Furniture floated back to their rightful places. 

Josie gritted her teeth together and felt her stomach twist. In another world, she would have been helping Hope clean up. In another world, her father would have come to Josie and her sister first. Well, maybe not _first_ , but at least _sometime_. 

The siphoner said nothing and turned away, unable to watch someone else fix the mess she had created. 

A few more minutes passed until every student in the school was finally in the main hall. Soon MG, Claire, and Alex joined them, and then Jessica showed up a few minutes later with the blonde vampire whose name Josie had finally learned a few days ago—Jordan. 

The group found seats at the back of the main hall as the meeting started. Josie sat up a little straighter when she noticed her father and her mother standing at the podium in the front. 

_No_ , she corrected herself. _Headmaster Saltzman and Headmistress Salvatore._

“Hi, everyone,” Caroline started warmly, dressed in a nice blazer and jeans. “I know that we’re all scared right now, but I can assure you that everything is okay and that you’re all safe here.” 

She was obviously going to say more, but the man next to her leaned forward and took over the microphone. 

“Nothing is wrong,” Alaric cut in without care. Josie rolled her eyes. Sure, the man was her father, but sometimes he could be really insensitive. “It was just an earthquake.” 

“That lasted half an hour?” Someone called out from within the crowd of students. It was a senior vampire that Josie faintly recognized. He looked pissed off. “An earthquake, my ass.” 

Alaric pretended not to hear a word. 

“It’s not just us. I called Mayor Donovan in town and he confirmed that they felt it over there, too,” the man said. “Yes, I am aware that there has been some property damage in the dorms, so please let either Caroline or I know if that is the case for any of you. Other than that, you can all go back to sleep.” 

Josie watched as Caroline gave Alaric a dirty look and grabbed the microphone from him. 

“Or,” she added kindly, “I know some of the younger kids are still a little shaken up, so please feel free to hang around and talk with your friends if it’ll make you feel better. That goes for you older kids, too. The kitchen is open if anyone would like some late-night snacks, I think the pantry should be fully stocked. We also have lots of board games in there.” 

Caroline smiled at everyone, in an attempt to reassure them. Josie felt her chest grow warm, with nostalgia, with regret, she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure if the feeling was good or bad. 

“Let’s turn this into a fun night, okay?” The headmistress ended her speech and stepped away, letting the hall dissolve back into restless chitchat and conversation. 

A game night? Josie sighed quietly. It was ordinary. All of this was so ordinary, _too_ ordinary. Without the threat of monsters looming at the school, their biggest worry was a fucking earthquake. 

_Not just an earthquake_ , a darker thought rose. _Don’t forget the Merge._

But Josie didn’t want to think about that. 

Instead, she just stared down at her hands. For a second, she could have sworn they glowed red, but that was just her imagining things again. She was sleep-deprived and more than that, she was plain _tired_. 

The siphoner turned back to her sister. She opened her mouth to tell Lizzie that she just wanted to go back to bed, not that she ever _had_ in the first place, but the blonde spoke first. 

“So...” Her eyes twinkled. “Monopoly?” 

Before Josie could complain, someone got out the game box and they all worked together to set up the board. The group formed a circle on a set of couches, with Josie sitting between her sister and her boyfriend. She started to shuffle the Chance cards, just to give herself something to do. 

It wasn’t a minute later that Lizzie called dibs on the top hat game piece.

“Hey, Jo.” Josie looked up from shuffling the Chance cards and saw that Claire was trying to get her attention. “Here’s the thimble. I know it’s your favorite...” 

She trailed off, reaching over the game board to hand Josie the thimble piece. A hesitant smile quirked up her lips. Claire was blushing brighter than Josie had ever seen before. 

The brunette didn’t know what to say. 

Whenever she usually played the game back in her own world, she would just take the last piece left that no one else wanted. And here she was now—being offered the thimble she had always secretly adored, but had never possessed the backbone to take on her own. 

“Thanks,” Josie choked out, her throat thick with emotion. She went back to shuffling the Chance cards and hoped Claire hadn’t noticed. 

“You got it last time!” 

“No, _you_ did!”

“Did not!” 

Across from her, Jordan and Jessica were fighting over the battleship game piece. Jordan ended up taking it for herself, while Jessica took the wheelbarrow and Claire ended up with the iron piece. When he thought no one was looking, Alex snuck the racecar into the palm of his hand. Josie surprised herself by laughing. 

MG got stuck with the boot, and when Lizzie tried to make Jed take the dog piece, he left to go play Twister with his pack. Kaleb took his place a few minutes later. 

The game started like that. Josie didn’t get any less tired. Midnight came and went. 

As it passed one in the morning, MG had already went bankrupt and the game wasn’t even halfway through. Lizzie was buying her second hotel and Josie was in jail. 

(She _had_ been for the past three turns.) 

The brunette hid a yawn as she looked around the room for the hundredth time that night. 

The first time she’d looked, she’d noticed that Penelope Park wasn’t in the room. Josie tried not to be disappointed. Maybe it was for the best, she convinced herself. Maybe Penelope had decided to just go back to bed, like any reasonable person, or maybe she was in the kitchen with her friends. Whatever. It wasn’t like Josie cared. Yeah. 

Josie let her eyes wander again. 

Hope Marshall was still in the same place the siphoner had seen her last. Why did she keep looking? As if Hope was going to disappear or something? She couldn’t help herself. She glanced over again.

The tribrid was now playing Battleship with Ethan, and by the looks of things, she was winning. Ethan whined as she sunk another one of his ships, and Hope smirked at him like it was the easiest thing in the world. 

Josie tried not to be bitter about it. Everyone needed friends. She should have been glad that Hope Marshall found one in Ethan, but...

She wasn’t. 

She tried to shrug the vague feeling of jealous off—it wasn’t jealousy, not really, she didn’t feel that way _at all_ —but it only came back ten times worse. No. She needed to stop. She couldn’t let it control her. 

Not like...

Not like last time. Not like with Landon. 

With Landon, she had been jealous _all_ of the time. So jealous that she’d lost herself in the darkness. That was probably the reason Landon had chosen Hope over her, Josie told herself. Then again, who wouldn’t? 

Wait. Landon...

What was his last name? 

Landon. _Landon..._

Josie repeated the name in her head. She realized that she couldn’t remember his last name. She was sure the word started with a K one second, but then the next she wasn’t so sure. 

Landon...

It was just out of reach, on the tip of her tongue, slipping out of her grasp. Josie started to panic. What was it? What was it? _What was it?_

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Lizzie tried to steal some of her fake money. She pretended not to notice, or maybe she didn’t really notice at all, her gaze still caught on the other side of the room. 

“Fuck you!” Jordan was saying, somewhere in the background. Josie barely heard her. “That’s my property.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Lizzie asked. “Board Walk is mine, asshat.” 

“No it isn’t!” 

“Yes it _is_!” Lizzie stood up off the couch and pointed at the board. “You knocked my hotel off when you passed Go.” 

“No, I didn’t!” Jordan argued again, standing up and glaring at the other blonde. She narrowed her eyes into hers. “Give me the card back. Give it to me.” 

Lizzie scoffed. “Oh, I _know_ you’re not trying to compel me right now,” she bit out. “I’m a witch—“ 

“Barely.” 

“You—“ Lizzie scrambled for the right word, eyes ablaze in anger. “You _bitch_!” 

And that was how the Monopoly board flipped off the table and onto the floor. 

All the cards and game pieces on top of it went flying everywhere, attracting attention from every single student in the room. 

“This is why we don’t play Monopoly,” Kaleb muttered underneath his breath. 

Josie sighed and reached over to start cleaning the mess up. She could feel eyes on her, not just eyes, but Josie could feel _her_ staring at her. Watching her. 

She suddenly felt self-conscious. The back of her neck burned hot and willed Josie to look back, but she didn’t. It wasn’t until she felt someone tugging on her sleeve that she turned around. 

“Jo! Jo!” 

It was Pedro. 

Though, it wasn’t _him_ she looked at when she turned. It was Hope’s gaze that drew her in, and her heart couldn’t help but stutter. Dark lashes framed light blue eyes, and Hope looked up at her from beneath them. 

Josie swallowed thickly and forced herself to turn back to Pedro. She felt as though she hadn’t seen him in ages.

“We’re going to the kitchen,” Pedro told her. He bounced a little, nearly buzzing over with excitement. “Can you make us those chocolate chip cookies you always do? Please, Jo? They’re our favorite!” 

Some of his friends stood behind him, looking up at Josie hopefully. Small pouts began to downturn their lips the longer it took her to answer. The brunette nodded before she fully understood what was happening. 

“Did someone say cookies?” 

Two arms wrapped around her waist from behind and a chin slotted over her shoulder. Jed. Josie forced a smile on her face to hide the way her body squirmed away from his. 

“Let me get the pack, babe,” Jed murmured, kissing her on the cheek. He did that a lot, she noticed. It didn’t make her skin crawl, not exactly, but it was starting to itch. Just a little. “They love it when you bake.” 

Ten minutes later, Josie stood in front of an empty bowl and a baking tray in the kitchen. 

She was _so_ screwed.

Pedro kept going on and on about her _famous_ recipe, but Josie had no fucking idea what that was. 

She tried to look through the kitchen cabinets for something that could clue her in on it, but it seemed that Josie Parker kept her secret, little recipe to herself in her head.

_Selfish bitch_ , Josie thought. But she didn’t mean it. That girl was obviously a damn angel, with the way everyone here all but worshipped her. 

Josie sighed and stared down at the bowl and tray in front of her. Pedro was expecting her to make cookie dough from scratch, and so far the only ingredient she could find in the fridge was a carton of eggs. And half a stick of butter. 

Worse, she could barely concentrate. 

The kitchen was crowded with wolves, and they didn’t bother to try to make it any easier on her. For his part, Pedro sat on top of the counter, staring up at her innocently. His friends were running back and forth nearby, playing magic tag. 

She watched them for a few seconds, frowning when they suddenly stopped running for no reason. The younger kids all straightened up and the entire kitchen went silent, as if they had been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been. The wolves even quieted down, too. 

Josie looked away from them and immediately saw why. Alaric Saltzman had just entered the kitchen, his sights set on...

Her.

“Hi, Josie.” The man smiled, but it felt cold. His lips were thin and the corners were stretched tight. He looked almost  worried. “Sorry to interrupt, but I need you to come to my office when you’re done with...” 

He looked at the stick of butter in her hand. Correction: at the half a stick of butter in her hand. 

Josie flushed red in embarrassment. She hadn’t seen him this close up since the week before. Something knotted in her chest like dread. Her heart skipped a beat, and then two, until it stopped altogether. 

“ _This_ ,” Alaric finished at last. 

He sounded stiff. Far away. Josie wanted nothing more than to bridge the distance, to throw herself into his arms and inhale his cologne, but she was a stranger to him. And he had stopped wearing cologne years ago. 

“The headmistress and I would like to talk to you,” he told her. 

Some of the younger kids started whispering and murmuring to each other, thinking that Josie was in trouble. She gave them a subtle look to be quiet. They listened. The wolves didn’t need to be told at all. 

“Sure,” Josie said, her voice deceptively casual. She dropped the stick of butter on the counter with a dull thud. Half of her was relieved, the other half felt sick to her stomach. “I can go now.” 

“Great. Thank you.” This time, the man’s smile was almost genuine. Josie looked at him and realized that she had no idea where she stood with him. 

He wasn’t her father here, just her headmaster, but the way he looked at her...

Josie could have sworn there was more. 

She followed him silently to his office after promising Pedro she would be back soon. The entire trip there, Josie thought and assumed the worst. 

There was no other reason her parents— _not your parents, not anymore, get it through your head_ —needed to speak with her. They knew what she had done. They knew that she had lost control and caused the earthquake. There could be no other explanation as to why they wanted to see her.

It made her sad, to understand this. Their only responsibility in her life now was to discipline and teach her. It was not to raise her, not to love her unconditionally, not to make sure she was happy, not to worry themselves sick over the Merge. That wasn’t their problem anymore, and Josie had never felt worse about herself for wishing that it _was_. 

“Please, take a seat,” Alaric told her as they entered his office. 

Josie realized that it was the first time she’d been in here since she’d woken up after the Merge. It was...different. 

Empty. 

There was a desk. A couch. Some chairs. The walls were all bare. The desk only had work supplies on it. No photos. The ones of their family was gone. The ones of Josette Parker before her death was gone. 

It was all—

_ Gone.  _

Josie sucked in a breath and realized that she was close to tears. It was too much. She had been fooling herself all week, kidding herself into thinking that she could do this, that she could pretend everything was fine, but it was _too much._

She just wanted her dad. She wanted her mom. Her sister. She wanted them all back. She wanted her _world_ back. But it was gone. 

Just like the office. Here. But not. 

“How are you doing, honey?” 

Caroline was already leaning against the desk when Josie came in. She motioned to the chair in front of her and the siphoner slowly sat down. 

“Okay,” Josie murmured as she lowered herself down, feeling like a cornered animal. Her eyes darted around the room, never staying on one spot for long. “Thank you.”

She watched Alaric round his desk and sit behind it. Caroline smiled and nodded gently. In that moment, Josie felt as though all her worries were slipping away. The smile on her mother’s face was so familiar, so kind and giving, Josie couldn’t help but let out a wistful sigh. 

Her relief was short-lived. 

“It wasn’t an earthquake,” Alaric told her bluntly, clasping his hands together on the table. Caroline glared at him. “And I never called the mayor.” 

Josie’s eyes widened. She hadn’t been expecting her father to call her out so quickly. She thought they’d at least be nice about it. 

“But you said—“

“We didn’t want to scare anyone,” Caroline admitted. “Whatever happened was caused by a magical disturbance. Miss Tig helped us do a spell to trace it back to the source.” 

Josie stayed silent. She could tell they were waiting for her, waiting for her to tell on herself, waiting for her to explain. She didn’t. She couldn’t. 

A few seconds passed, or maybe it was even a minute. It seemed like an hour to Josie. 

“We traced it back to you,” Alaric said, at last. He didn’t sound mad, but he didn’t sound too happy about it either. 

Josie looked down at her lap and stared at her fingers. Maybe then they would stop shaking. 

“Can you tell us if it was an accident?” Caroline implored softly, ducking her head down to look Josie in the eye. “Or should we be more concerned?” 

Josie _could_ lie. She could say she had no idea what they were talking about, but she doubted that she would ever get away with it. Her heart was beating too fast and vampire hearing wouldn’t let her. 

“It was an accident,” Josie told them quietly, still staring at her fingers. They trembled even worse than before. They only stopped when she finally looked up. “I was sleeping. I didn’t even know what happened until after I woke up.” 

It was silent for a few seconds. Until—

Caroline smiled at her. She wasn’t angry, Josie realized. She wasn’t angry at all. 

“It’s not your fault, honey,” Caroline said, crouching down so that they were eye to eye. “Don’t feel bad. These things happen. The important thing is that no one was hurt, okay? Your secret is safe with—“ 

“Have you been doing any dark magic lately?” Alaric interrupted, his eyes swirling with emotion. There were so many that Josie couldn’t pinpoint a single one. 

“No,” Josie said quickly, too quickly. A few times, yes, but she hadn’t done dark magic in a while. They didn’t need to know that she’d done it _at all_. “No.” 

  
  
Her heart beat betrayed her.

The two adults shared a nervous glance. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i rewrote this chapter like 3 times, i hope you guys liked it :) thank you for all the kudos and comments


	11. Chapter 11

“Are you coming to the party?” 

Josie said nothing and bit her lip as she stared out of her bedroom window. 

(Yes. A _window_. They had gotten it a little over a week ago, with the help of some magic and the headmistress’ permission.)

The sky outside was light and blue, streaked with white clouds. There weren’t any birds chirping, and the trees were all still. Josie herself was _not_. 

Her heart was pounding and she couldn’t get her mind to stop—to stop racing, to stop thinking, to just _stop_. But at least she had a good reason. 

The siphoner had just woken up from another nightmare. She’d been plagued by them every night this week. 

Always the same dream. Her, underwater, gasping for breath, splashing desperately around her, screaming without sound. Drowning over and over again. 

But not her. Josie Parker.

It was nearing the end of the month and Josie still knew as much about what had happened on the docks as she had on her birthday. 

Meaning, she knew nothing at all. 

“Parker?” 

Josie glanced away from the window and looked back to her roommate. 

“Sorry.” She blushed, standing up from her desk and putting her backpack on top of it. Class would start in about an hour. “I was thinking of staying in. I don’t really feel like going to a party tonight.” 

Alyssa frowned from where she stood in front of her mirror. Her fingers played clumsily with the tie around her collar. “Isn’t your boyfriend the one throwing it?” 

Josie hid a wince. She honestly had no idea. It was now Friday, and she’d barely seen her boyfriend since Monday, in an effort to catch up in her classes. She was starting to fail in most of them. 

But she didn’t want to think about that right now. Instead, she snuck another glance at Alyssa, who was still struggling with her tie. 

Josie knew the other witch wouldn’t give up until it was perfect. She briefly wondered if she should offer some help, but the last time she had done that hadn’t worked out so well. Alyssa had thought she was playing a joke on her. 

“Come here,” Josie blurted out, after a few seconds of watching Alyssa. The other girl raised her eyebrows and gave her a curious look. “Just...” 

She sighed quietly. “Just come here.” 

Alyssa seemed hesitant to move, but she listened. She crossed the few steps between them until she was standing directly in front of Josie. 

“What are you...?” Alyssa trailed off as the siphoner raised her hands to her neck. Not close enough to touch, and yet, too close to deny the intent. 

Josie didn’t move any closer, waiting for permission. After a few seconds, Alyssa finally gave a stiff nod without looking her in the eye. 

The brunette smiled smugly, but it was gone before Alyssa could get mad about it. She used her fingers to smooth down the collar of the other girl’s shirt before deftly undoing the crooked knot Alyssa had made. 

“Are you sick?” Alyssa asked, clearing her throat. 

Her hands twitched at her sides, almost like she wanted to reach out and feel Josie’s forehead for a fever, but that would have been crazy. Right? 

“No,” Josie told her. For whatever reason, Alyssa narrowed her eyes like she didn’t believe her. 

“You never miss a party,” she said. “Unless you’re sick.” 

_ Really?  _

Josie hummed, making a small noise at the back of her throat. She bit her lip and crossed both ends of the tie over each other, with the longer end over the shorter one. 

“Are you going?” she asked, just to make conversation. 

The silence was awkward and stifling and Josie couldn’t take a second longer of it. She realized that they were both holding their breath. Maybe that was why it was so quiet. 

“Of course I am,” Alyssa scoffed. 

“Oh.” Josie didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed like everyone was going to this damn party. She wondered how bad it would look if she didn’t go. “Do you want to go together?” 

She let go of the tie and stepped back, admiring her work. Alyssa glanced down and didn’t move an inch. Her eyes were dark and clouded. 

“I’d rather go to hell,” she told Josie with a smile, but it looked even more forced than usual. 

Josie frowned as Alyssa finally put some space between them, not even bothering to thank her for her help. The witch picked up her backpack by her own desk and walked to the door.   
  
  


“See you at the party!” she called back. 

“I’m not going,” Josie mumbled after her. 

Alyssa laughed. “You will.” 

Josie watched the door close with a small pout. She put her head in her hands and sighed. 

Alyssa was right. Going to the party was expected of her. Not of _her_ , but of Josie Parker. Whoever she was. Josie knew the girl would kill her if she saw what she’d done with her life, and she didn’t want to ruin things any more than she already had. If Josie Parker ever came back, she would find everything exactly as she had left it. 

Which meant Josie would have to go to that damn party. But she wouldn’t have any fun. She would stay clear away from drugs and alcohol. She couldn’t afford to mess up and make a fool of herself. 

She couldn’t afford to get drunk and start spilling her secrets. 

—

Josie was drunk. 

It began with her being cold. 

The party was in the woods at the old mill. It officially started at ten o’clock at night, but Josie had come early to help at the request of Jed. 

She didn’t end up helping much. She sat back and watched the wolves set up the keg near the mill and build a bonfire, but it did nothing to keep away the cold. 

An hour into the party, Jed wrapped his jacket over her shoulders, telling her that he had something to warm her up. He then handed her a red solo cup of—

Well. Josie actually wasn’t sure _what_ it was. Jed said nothing and only bragged about the fact that he had mixed it himself. 

The drink was pink and smelled like lemonade and nail polish remover, but it tasted like cheap vodka. Josie tried to hand the cup back to him, but he looked so excited for her to try it that it made her feel bad. She just chugged it down her throat and smiled around the burn it left behind. 

It didn’t help that her stomach was empty. She knew she would regret not eating before the party, but she just hadn’t been hungry. 

Her second drink was a little easier to swallow. The third one came when she caught a glimpse of Penelope Park making out with some guy behind a tree. The fourth one was all too fucking easy after that. 

“You said that she smells different,” Josie blurted out, a little after midnight. Jed sat next to her on a log, where they were sharing a cup of jungle juice. The kool-aid in it made their lips look bright red. “Is that normal?” 

The siphoner had just caught sight of Ethan Machado and Hope Marshall walking out of the old mill, nursing their own cups. It made Josie pout without realizing it. 

She had never once seen the tribrid at a party as Hope Marshall. She hadn’t even been able to convince Hope Mikaelson to come to one, and here was Ethan...

“Who?” Jed asked. 

“Hope,” the brunette told him, like it was obvious. Jed looked even more confused this time, if that was possible. 

“Hope?” he repeated dumbly. “Who’s Hope?” 

Josie looked at him. 

“Oh.” He nodded, squeezing the cup in his hand as it dawned on him. The liquid inside splashed all over their clothes. “You mean _Marshall_.” 

Jed took a second to think about it. Josie didn’t blame him. It was a while ago since they had first talked about it. 

“Well, yeah,” he said. 

Josie blinked. “Why do you think she smells different, I mean?” 

Jed gave her a weird look. He downed the rest of the jungle juice before he replied. 

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Now that I think about it, you smell different, too. It happens.” 

Josie wasn’t really listening. Her eyes were on Hope and Ethan, who were walking by them at that very moment. 

“Hey, look. It’s your friend Ethan. Let’s go say hi.” Josie stood up so quickly that she almost passed right out on the spot. Jed steadied her with a hand on her arm. “You two are friends, right?” 

Josie peeled off his jacket and handed him it back. She was warm, too warm, and the bonfire in front of them made her feel even hotter. The alcohol was rearing its head again, flushing her cheeks and buzzing in her veins. 

“Um...” Jed trailed off unsurely. “Kind of? We’re not... _actually_...talking right now. I think? I kind of fucked up the other night...” 

Josie frowned. They’d been fine just last week. What happened between now and then to make Jed act so...awkward? 

“Nonsense.” She waved him off, dragging him behind her by his arm. He muttered a curse word underneath his breath she pretended not to hear, but the wolf didn’t try to fight her this time. 

“Ethan!” Josie called out. Over the last few weeks, she’d started to get used to him being around all the time, though the guilt never went away like she hoped it would. “Hey.” 

The boy turned around as soon as he heard his name, but Hope wasn’t so fast. The set of her back suddenly went tense and rigid. 

“Hey.” Ethan grinned at her, but his smile dropped as his eyes fell on Jed. Just a little. Josie almost didn’t notice. Her own gaze was on Hope. She licked her lips and realized that they were numb. 

“Hope.” She nodded at the other girl in acknowledgment, but Hope didn’t return the smile she gave her. She just pressed her lips together and looked away. “How are you guys doing?” 

“Good, good,” Ethan said, putting his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “What about you two?” 

“Good, good,” Josie echoed. She glanced at Jed, but his eyes were on the ground. She had never seen him look so shy before. Weird. She turned back to Ethan and searched for something to say. 

“Are you enjoying the party?” she ended up asking. Her eyes darted to Hope. 

The tribrid was still staring at nothing, sipping at her cup. Josie noticed that it was filled to the rim, almost full. She wondered if this was Hope’s first drink. 

“Of course I am,” Ethan told her with a laugh, as if any other answer would be wrong. He raised his voice over the music. “I’m glad you found me. I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you.” 

Josie stared at Jed, waiting for his answer. Almost a full minute passed before she realized that Ethan was looking at _her_. _Talking_ to her. Not him. 

Her eyes went wide. She felt all the drinks she had had before rise in her throat like vomit. They definitely didn’t taste as good coming up as they did going down. 

“Oh,” she breathed out, confused. She glanced at Hope and swore that she felt her chest cave in. “What did you want to tell me?” 

Ethan eyed her boyfriend warily. 

“That’s the thing.” He leaned in an inch or two closer. “Do you think we could talk in private?” 

Josie nodded slowly, at a desperate attempt to calm her racing thoughts. What did Ethan want to talk her about? 

Oh, _God_. Her heart dropped. Had she broken his arm in this world, too? 

“Sure.” 

Ethan smiled and led her to a spot a few feet away, where there weren’t as many students. She could feel eyes on her back as they walked off together, but she wasn’t sure if they were from Hope or Jed. Maybe they were from both. 

Once they were alone, Josie asked, “So what’s up?” 

It didn’t come out as casually as she would have liked. She was still a little tipsy and her voice sounded way too loud, even to her own ears. 

“This is kind of weird,” Ethan started, “but I was wondering if it would be okay with you if I asked your sister out.” 

Josie did a double-take. “Lizzie?” 

“Yeah.” The wolf nodded. Half of his face was red, the other half was as white as a sheet. He was nervous. 

“And...” Josie paused, taken aback. “You wanted _my_ permission to do that?” 

She waited for Ethan to tell her that she’d heard him wrong. But he didn’t. 

The boy just nodded again. “Yeah.” 

_ What the hell?  _

“I thought you liked Hope?” Josie blurted out. 

She gasped the second the words escaped her mouth. Ethan didn’t seem to care. He even looked...confused. Crap. Had Josie seen this all wrong? 

“Hope?” Ethan asked. He shook his head when he realized what she’d meant. “Oh, no. _No_. Maya has dibs on her.” 

It was Josie’s turn to be confused. “Maya?” 

She didn’t like the idea of anyone having dibs on Hope. It reminded her of Lizzie, for some reason. 

“My sister,” Ethan clarified, looking at Josie like she was either very drunk or crazy. He knitted his eyebrows together and tilted his head to the side. “I think you’ve met her before, right?”

Great. Another person Josie didn’t know and could never remember. 

“ _Oh_!” The siphoner decided to just pretend that she knew who Maya was. She nodded her head up and down a few times. “ _Right_! Right.” 

Awkward silence filled the space between them. 

“So...” Ethan gave her a meaningful look. She stared back at him blankly. “About Lizzie...?” 

_Oh_. 

Josie almost laughed, but she managed to keep the smile off her face.

A part of her wanted to tell the wolf that he didn’t have her permission, just to see his reaction, but she didn’t. If he really liked Lizzie, she wouldn’t stand in the way of that. Besides, Josie was pretty sure that Ethan was a good guy. It wasn’t like Hope would be hanging out with him so much if he wasn’t. 

“You should go for it,” Josie told him. “I think she likes you, too, if that helps—“ 

“Really?” Ethan grinned, looking beyond relieved. “Thanks, Jo. You’re the best. I’m gonna go talk to her now, I think. I’ll see you around, okay?” 

He was gone before Josie could blink. 

“See you.” 

The next time Josie saw Ethan was more than an hour later, and Hope was no longer with him. It was getting late and people were starting to leave. Josie was now on her sixth drink, and Jed was trying to get her to play beer pong inside the old mill. 

It seemed fun, but Josie was tired and could barely move her feet from how much she’d been dancing. She didn’t think her stomach could take it, either. They would be playing against Ethan and Lizzie, and Josie knew her sister was good at the game. 

_She_ was not, and while Josie Parker could _maybe_ take her alcohol, Josie Saltzman was a fucking _lightweight_. 

“Come on, Jo,” Jed pleaded. He smelled like weed. Josie was pretty sure she saw his entire pack sneak out behind the mill to smoke earlier. “Just one game.” 

“Fine—“

“No.” A hand latched itself onto her arm and pulled her away from the beer pong table. “You’re not playing.” 

Josie fluttered her eyes open and sleepily tracked the hand up to a face. 

Alyssa Chang.

“Don’t tell her what to do,” Lizzie snapped across the table. She crossed her arms, jumping to defend her sister.

“Look at her,” Alyssa said, talking about Josie as if she wasn’t even in the room. “She can barely see straight.” 

Josie found that hilarious. “That’s ‘cause I’m not.” She giggled loudly. 

Lizzie rolled her eyes and palmed her forehead. 

“For fucks’ sake, Josie,” she cursed. “You only make that joke when you’re drunk off your ass.” 

She turned back to Alyssa, looking both apologetic and annoyed. “You’re right for once. Can you please take her back to your room?” 

“Sorry?” Alyssa pretended not to understand. 

Lizzie huffed. “I said _please_ , asshat.” 

“And?” 

The blonde looked like she wanted to die. 

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. 

Alyssa smirked. “Thank you.” 

She turned back to Josie and handed her the cup in her hand. The siphoner hadn’t even noticed it before. Maybe she really _was_ out of it. 

“Here,” Alyssa said. Their fingers brushed as Josie took the cup. Heat radiated from her touch. “Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.” 

Josie stared down into the cup and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. The liquid inside was clear and smelled like nothing. 

“Is this water?” she asked. 

“No,” Alyssa told her, without batting an eyelash. “It’s vodka.” 

Josie took a hesitant sip and instantly frowned. 

“Okay, I’m not _that_ drunk,” she muttered, kind of offended that Alyssa thought she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. 

“Yes, you are,” the other girl told her seriously. She almost looked...concerned. “Now drink your water and say goodbye to your friends. We’re going back to our room.” 

“Okay.” Josie was done with this night, anyway. She just wanted to go to sleep. 

After she was done saying goodbye to everyone inside the old mill, she let Alyssa drag her away and towards the woods outside. An unfamiliar voice on their left stopped them. 

“Alyssa!” It was one of the witch’s friends. She was waving Alyssa over. “You’re not leaving without saying goodbye, are you?” 

The witch frowned and glanced at Josie. 

“Wait here,” Alyssa told her. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.” 

Josie said nothing.

“Seriously.” Alyssa gave her a look, as if she was talking to some disobedient dog and not an actual human. “Stay put.” 

The siphoner nodded. 

“Good girl.” Alyssa smirked, but Josie was too out of it to be offended anymore. 

She only nodded again, but the other girl was already gone. A few seconds passed and she looked around, just to give herself something to do. A few more seconds came and went. She took another sip of her water and grew restless. 

Alyssa’s words started to fade to the back of her mind. It was getting harder and harder to remember them. Why was Josie waiting again? 

Well. 

The siphoner _had_ planned to listen and stay where she was. She was going to _wait_ and _stay put_ and be _good_ and _everything_ , but then she saw Hope Marshall standing by herself outside the mill. 

Just a few feet away. 

Hope was leaning against a tree, drinking from the red solo cup in her hand. She peered over the rim of her cup, watching the party outside with mild disinterest. Her free hand was tucked into the pocket of her jacket. 

She looked bored. 

_Josie_ looked bored, too. 

She wasn’t really thinking when she stepped forward and started walking towards the other girl. She didn’t make it five steps before she stumbled over a twig and tripped. 

The liquid in her cup sloshed over the rim and spilled all over her. Josie squeaked and prepared herself to hit the ground, but she didn’t. 

Someone caught her. They pulled her back up with two arms around her waist, and they didn’t let go until she had both feet planted firmly on the ground. 

“Aww, you caught me,” Josie giggled out, her face growing hot. She would later blame it on the alcohol. “My savior, Hope Marshmallow.” 

The tribrid frowned, but she made sure that Josie was steady before taking a step back and giving her space. 

“ _Marshall_ ,” Hope corrected, eyeing the spilled cup on the ground with concern. 

Josie pouted, suddenly serious. 

“But that’s not it, either,” she told Hope. The other girl snapped her head up in surprise. “Is it?”

Hope stared at her, and Josie stared back. The other girl watched her for a few seconds, as if she was really, _really_ looking at Josie. As if she was searching for something. There was a moment, there, where Josie almost thought that Hope wouldn’t deny it, that Hope would tell the truth, but she didn’t. 

Her throat bobbed and she looked away, eyes darkening. Blue thinned to black in the night. Whatever she’d been looking for, she hadn’t found it.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” was all Hope said. “It’s getting late. Why are you alone?” 

Josie let her change the subject.

“Why are _you_ alone?” she returned easily. Her voice came out too loud and she shushed Hope before realizing that the words had come from _her_. 

The tribrid flushed pink. She didn’t reply, not that it mattered. They both knew the answer. Quiet, little Hope Marshall only had one friend, and he was inside the mill playing beer pong. 

Josie regretted saying the words as soon as they left her mouth. The truth was, she didn’t know much, but she knew that Hope must have been lonely. And she knew that Josie Parker _wasn’t_. 

The siphoner hadn’t been able to do anything about it until it was too late in her own world, but she could do something now.

“We should be friends,” Josie blurted out, a little crazy, mostly tipsy. A lot tipsy. Her words slurred together. 

Hope just shook her head and chose to pretend that she hadn’t said anything at all. 

“You should go back to your room,” she murmured in a numb voice, staring off into the distance. Almost like she was talking to herself. “The headmaster is going to break up the party soon.” 

Josie didn’t question how Hope knew that. She just bit her lip and hummed. Those last few drinks she had were starting to hit her. All at once. 

“Maybe.” 

She turned her head over her shoulder and looked back at the mill. It seemed so far away. She briefly wondered if Alyssa was looking for her. The thought made her stomach clench. 

She turned back to Hope. “Walk with me?” 

The tribrid paused and did a double-take. Just when Josie thought that she was going to shake her head and laugh in her face, Hope nodded. 

“Yay!” A grin quirked up her lips before Josie could stop it. “Let’s go.” 

She bent down to pick up the cup she had dropped and almost fell over. She would have ended up sprawled all over the ground again, if not for Hope. 

The tribrid kept her upright with a hand around her waist. It only lingered for a second or two, but it was long enough for the skin there to burn in its wake. 

“How many drinks have you had?” 

Josie smiled at her and didn’t hear a word. Her head was buzzing happily. “Why aren’t we friends?” she asked instead. 

Hope chuckled, but it sounded...wrong. 

“Ask me that again in the morning,” she muttered darkly, starting to lead them back to the school. 

“I don’t think I’ll remember in the morning,” Josie said. She thought about it and frowned sadly. “I can’t remember _anything_.” 

Josie heard the other girl’s breath hitch in her throat. She stopped walking, though Hope didn’t. 

“ _Parker_ ,” she warned dangerously. The tribrid turned back and their eyes met. Josie felt her stomach grow warm. 

“What happened at the lake?” she asked, more than a little desperate. Hope sighed and kept walking. 

“Nothing.” 

“What happened?” Josie repeated, walking faster to catch up with the other girl. 

A wet leaf slipped under her shoe and she almost lost her balance. Josie swayed forward as vomit rose high in her throat. It tasted like vodka. She coughed around the sting it left inside her throat. 

“I don’t know,” Hope told her. Her strides were short and quick. Angry. Josie could barely keep up. Her head was spinning. “You were already in the lake when I found you.” 

Josie knew that the answer couldn’t have been that simple. Her stomach churned. 

“You’re lying.” 

Hope said nothing. 

Josie grew even bolder. She was done with being patient and waiting for Hope to come to her first. She needed answers. Better ones. 

“You pushed me in.” Josie finally caught up to Hope and pulled her back by her arm. The tribrid faced her with bared teeth. “Didn’t you?” 

“Stop,” she growled out. Fists clenched. She turned back around, her feet pounding into the dirt, almost running to get away from Josie. “I would never do that.”

The siphoner ignored her. She pretended as if she hadn’t spoken at all. 

“But then you regretted it, right?” Josie asked. Her words slurred and bumped into each other, but Hope could still understand them. “So you thought you’d save me and make yourself out to be the hero?” 

“Stop.” 

“And the scratches on my back.” Josie pulled her back again. She couldn’t help herself. And neither could Hope. “They’re from _you_ , aren’t they?” 

“Stop. Stop.” Hope shook her head desperately. She raised her hands up to her temples, clutching at her hair like it hurt. Her voice was pleading. Miserable. “Please _stop_.” 

She kept walking. Even faster, now. 

“I will if you tell me,” the brunette said. She didn’t want to upset Hope, but she needed to fill the blanks in her memories. “Why can’t you just—“ 

“ _Stop_!” Hope whirled around, so quickly that Josie stumbled backwards and fell. She barely caught herself this time. “I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t...I wasn’t in _control_. You weren’t supposed to be there...” 

She trailed off as she realized what she’d said. The tribrid slowly raised her eyes to Josie’s, mouth dropping open in horror. 

Josie sucked in a breath and realized that her chest was shaking. Her hands were, too. 

“It was you?” She suddenly felt faint. She was bluffing when she’d been accusing Hope of hurting her. She had only planned to get a reaction out of her. To anger her enough to get the truth. 

And the truth was worse than she could have ever imagined. It was something she wished she had never sought out in the first place. 

“I...” 

Hope stared hard at the ground. Her shoulders were rising and falling, chest visibly heaving with the force of it. She screwed her eyes shut and sighed quietly. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she whispered. Her voice was shaky. Or maybe that was just Josie. Maybe that was just what it sounded like over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears. “That night, you caught me off guard. I thought you’d be safe at the party. You were supposed to stay inside the school. It was a fucking full moon. _Everyone_ was supposed to stay inside. I tried to change back but it was too late. Why didn’t you just stay inside? Why didn’t you...?” 

She wasn’t able to continue, but Josie already had enough to piece it together. It dawned on her the moment Hope had mentioned the full moon. 

Josie Parker had left the party and had wandered into the woods for some reason. She’d run into Hope Marshall in her wolf form, and the girl had attacked her before shifting back. Josie Parker must have figured out that Hope was at least a hybrid, and that was why Hope had been relieved in the infirmary when Josie hadn’t been able to remember what happened. She thought her secret was safe. Safe in lost memories. 

But that still didn’t explain what had happened at the lake...

“And after that?” Josie asked, slightly out of breath. Her stomach squirmed. She felt beyond nauseous. “What happened after that?” 

Hope flickered her burning eyes up in surprise. If she was confused as to why Josie didn’t ask about her being a wolf, she didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything at all. As if there was nothing left to tell. 

“I saw the text messages,” Josie told her. She stomped up to the other girl and forced her sick stomach to settle. “I saw them. I know we met up after.” 

Hope clenched her jaw and didn’t speak. 

“Please tell me,” Josie begged. She couldn’t tell if she wanted to cry or if she just wanted to throw her guts up, but the tears were already coming and she was sure her stomach contents were next. “I can’t live like this anymore.” 

The other girl swallowed hard enough for Josie to hear it. She didn’t say anything, though, she just watched Josie with wide eyes. 

“I don’t recognize my parents, my own sister is a stranger,” the brunette said, feeling her chest grow tight at the honesty of those words. Even if Hope wouldn’t be able to understand, it was enough to let it out. “I’m failing in all of my classes. And I’m pretty sure my boyfriend’s cheating on me. Either that or...” 

Before Josie could finish, the tribrid suddenly let out a scoff like a laugh, her lips turned up into a rueful smirk. It was kind of cold, the way she smiled. Josie hated it. 

“Why are you laughing?” she asked angrily. 

This wasn’t fucking funny. Her head was spinning and she could barely keep her eyes open and—

She felt like she was falling apart. 

“Your boyfriend isn’t cheating on you,” Hope said simply, shaking her head. Without any explanation. 

“That’s all you took from that? Are you serious?” Josie hissed, trying to put up a strong front, but her bottom lip began to wobble dangerously. 

She pushed against Hope’s shoulders with both hands and instantly regretted it. Hope didn’t move or budge an inch at all, and now Josie’s headache was even worse. 

Fucking _great_. 

The tribrid just stayed quiet. It was both unnerving and suspicious. It made Josie frown. 

“What aren’t you telling me?” She didn’t add anything. Just waited. It worked. 

“Your boyfriend didn’t cheat on you,” Hope finally said, after a beat of silence too long and too loud. She ran her tongue over her chapped lips and sighed. “We...” 

She grimaced and corrected herself. 

“ _You_.” Their eyes caught. Brown on...yellow. Hope didn’t even try to hide it. “You cheated on _him_.” 

Josie stiffened. 

“I...” Her mouth went dry. “With who?” 

She wondered why people asked questions they already knew the answers to. Maybe that was the point. So it’d hurt less when she knew what was coming. 

“With me,” Hope whispered. 

The yellow in her eyes died out. 


	12. Chapter 12

Josie shook her head, in part to deny it and in part to jog her memories. But they weren’t hers. They never would be. 

“You’re lying.” 

Hope clenched her teeth together. 

“I wish I was,” she muttered. 

Josie stared at her and silently begged her to say more. Hope stared back and silently begged her to let it go. But Josie wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not again. 

And Hope knew it. 

The tribrid sighed quietly and glanced away. 

“You told me he wouldn’t care,” she explained. Her voice shook. She couldn’t use _his_ name. “You said it was okay, that you were just using him, and that he was just using you, too, or something. That it was all just an _act_.” 

Josie blinked and realized that she was crying. Her tears were warm as they streamed down her face. The rest of her body was hot, too, covered in sweat from the party. 

“I didn’t understand,” Hope continued. “You looked so _happy_ with him. All the time. I thought I never had a chance. But then...you kissed me, or I kissed you, maybe, it was hard to tell. We got...carried away.” 

Josie blushed and looked at the ground, wiping at her wet cheeks. She wondered how far they had went, and immediately cursed herself for thinking it. 

_They_ hadn’t done anything. It was just another reminder that she wasn’t Josie Parker. 

“I didn’t want to ruin your relationship, even if you said it was fake, so I-I ran.” Hope closed her eyes, for just a second, as if she was searching for the strength to continue. “ _Again_.” 

She turned her head over her shoulder. Josie imagined that she was trying to hide the way her lips trembled. She wanted to reach out and make it better, make _all_ of this better, but she knew that nothing could. 

“You tried to chase after me, but I wouldn’t let you,” the tribrid said. “I just—I needed to get away. I wasn’t thinking. I did a body-freezing spell so that you wouldn’t follow me. I... _I wasn’t thinking_.” 

Josie found that her mouth had gone dry. She licked her lips, swearing that they tasted of lake water. 

“I was halfway back to the school when I heard the splash.” Hope winced. Her voice was overridden with anguish. Josie had never seen her so upset before. She usually did a better job of hiding it. “You were already in the lake by the time I came back. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Maybe if I’d stayed...maybe if I hadn’t done the spell...you would be fine and none of this would have happened...” 

Hope continued to ramble on, but Josie heard none of it. The sound of her pounding heart was so loud it drowned out everything but her own harsh breathing. 

None of what the tribrid said make sense. She was acting as if she was the reason Josie had nearly drowned, but if anything, the freezing spell would have stopped any chance of that. 

Right? 

But then—

How the hell did Josie Parker get into the water? 

“Hope. Stop. Stop,” she cut the other girl off, placing her hands on her shoulders to shake her out of it, to steady _herself_. She was sure she was going to fall over and puke her guts out any moment now. “How did I...?” 

For a second, Josie forgot what she was about to ask. She had to blink a few times to remember. The thick haze of alcohol was fogging over her mind more and more as the minutes passed, and she had to inhale deeply to get her spinning thoughts under control. 

“How did I get into the water?” she finished breathlessly. The brunette pressed her eyelids together and lost herself in the blacks of them. It would be so easy to just go to sleep, to just forget that this had ever happened. 

“I-I don’t know,” Hope told her. She sounded lost. “You must have tripped and fell—“ 

“No. Hope.” She shook the other girl again, needing her to understand. “The spell would have kept me in place. How did I get into the water if you did a freezing spell?” 

They were silent for a moment as the words settled in, slow and then all at once. Josie let go of Hope and rubbed tiredly at her forehead. She resisted the urge to kneel over and pull air into her aching lungs. She knew she would just throw up if she did that. 

“Oh.” Hope stared at a tree in front of them, unseeing and stunned. “You...” 

She paused. Her guilt had stopped her from seeing it before. 

“You think someone pushed you,” she realized slowly. It was undeniable. Either that, or Josie had tried to kill herself somehow,  and neither of them wanted to think about that. “But who would do that? Everyone _loves_ you.” 

The siphoner didn’t know. She could hardly breathe, and thinking didn’t come so easily right now, either. Maybe Josie Parker wasn’t as popular as she had once thought. 

“ _God_.” Josie swallowed hard. All the chances she had given Hope to come out with this, and the tribrid had chosen not to every damn time. “You knew. This entire month...”

The thought of Hope staying quiet for so long somehow angered her more than the thought of someone pushing her into the lake. She had lived through an attempted murder before, but Hope had never once betrayed her quite like this. 

Her stomach twisted. “Why didn’t you say anything?” 

Hope pressed her lips together and said nothing, as if to prove her point. Josie turned, ready to walk away. She was done. So _done_. 

She stepped forward, intent on leaving, but she was stopped by the soft voice behind her. It was full of self-loathing. 

“I didn’t want to confuse you,” the other girl admitted, but Josie knew that it wasn’t the truth. Not all of it. “I thought I’d just wait for you to come to me first after you remembered, but you didn’t. So I thought I’d just wait a little more, but you _still_ didn’t. Part of me started to wonder if I had just imagined everything.” 

There was something in her eyes. Something almost like hate. But she didn’t hate Josie. She hated herself. 

“I convinced myself that I was fine with it,” Hope said. Her voice was a shadow of a whisper. “If you couldn’t remember, maybe it was better that way.” 

“Better for who?” Josie breathed out. 

Hope opened her mouth and closed it. 

The siphoner had her answer. Hope was protecting herself—she would always protect herself first—and Josie couldn’t blame her. 

Even if it hurt. 

“W-We can still be friends,” Hope offered, sounding almost panicked. Scared. But that couldn’t be right. She never panicked. 

Josie wanted to throw it back in her face, she wanted to be upset for a little while longer, but she had never been cruel before and she knew that she couldn’t. 

“Yeah,” she muttered, defeated. Her tears had gone cold. The sweat covering her entire body now felt like frost. She scoffed. “ _Friends_.” 

Her vision began to blur again. She suddenly felt suffocated. She needed to leave. She needed to not be _here_. God, she was so stupid. So fucking stupid. Just when she was starting to get used to _this_ , everything she knew was changing again. 

_ Away. I have to get away.  _

“Wait.” Fingers wrapped around her wrist and pulled her back. “You can’t tell anyone about me.” 

It was too much at once. It felt like her skin was on fire. Josie flinched away from the other girl’s touch and pulled her arm back. She caught the wounded look Hope gave her a second later and instantly regretted it. 

Her face fell. “Hope...” 

“You’re scared,” the other girl said. The pain and frustration in her eyes nearly broke her heart. She could tell that Hope was trying to keep her voice strong. “You’re scared _of me_.” 

No. _No_. Josie shook her head. That wasn’t it at all. She just wasn’t feeling well. 

“No,” she pleaded. God, Hope had it all wrong. So _wrong_. “I’m _not_ —“ 

“I don’t believe you,” the tribrid told her. She stepped back and put some space between them, though Josie quickly moved forward to close it. She wanted to show Hope that she wasn’t afraid. 

“It’s okay if you are.” Hope shrugged miserably. Her eyes were, not yellow, but gold. A startling, dark shade that made Josie gasp. “I’m a monster. Right?” 

It was the way she said it that gave Josie pause. Like she was supposed to agree with the girl or something. But there was something deeper there. Almost as if Hope was looking for comfort. For someone to tell her that she _wasn’t_ a monster. 

“Parker?” 

Both girls turned to look at the owner of the voice. 

Alyssa Chang stood a few feet away, the tips of her fingers ignited with light. She squinted her eyes to see through the trees, but she hadn’t noticed Hope yet.

Josie turned back to the tribrid, only to realize that she was gone. She pouted at the spot she had last seen her in and slowly faced Alyssa again. 

“I know your family has a history of being bat-shit crazy,” the witch said, “but talking to yourself in the woods is kind of pushing it.” 

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down her nose at Josie. As if she was better than her or something. As if Josie hadn’t stumbled upon the other girl’s prescription meds under the bathroom sink the other day. She didn’t know what they were for, but she had an inkling. 

“No. No. I wasn’t—“ Josie cut herself off and gulped, massaging her throat. 

Oh.

_ Oh, crap.  _

She _really_ didn’t feel so good.

The siphoner opened her mouth.

And threw up all over Alyssa Chang’s shoes. 

—

She must have passed out. The next time Josie opened her eyes, she found herself staring up at the ceiling in her room. Alyssa hovered above her, waving a hand in front of her face. 

“You need to get up,” she told her, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “You stink. And you owe me a new pair of shoes.” 

Josie slowly sat up in her bed and rubbed a hand over her upset stomach. It growled and squirmed underneath her fingertips.   


Even worse, she noticed that her throat was sore. It felt like it had been scrubbed raw with a dull knife. The bad taste in her mouth made her wince. 

Alyssa must have seen the look on her face, because she backed away and held a plastic bag out in front of her with her eyes clenched shut, face scrunched up in disgust. 

“Aim for the bag, Sloppy Jo.” 

Josie shook her head at the nickname and cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was raspy. 

“I’m not gonna throw up again,” she told Alyssa, swinging her legs over the bed. The sudden movement was too quick for her stomach to handle and she found herself swaying dangerously forward. 

Alyssa gave her a look that showed she didn’t believe her for a second. 

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Look. I’m gonna run a bath for you, and you’re gonna find something to change into. Then we can both pretend that this never happened. Deal?” 

Josie wanted to ask what _Alyssa_ got out of the deal, but she didn’t. That would have been weird, or maybe not. She wondered how many times the other girl had taken care of her like this before tonight. Before she could ask, Alyssa disappeared into the bathroom. 

The siphoner stood up and walked over to her dresser as the water started running in the bathroom. Her steps were just a little bit wobbly and she found that she couldn’t catch her breath completely right. 

She exhaled a deep sigh as her clumsy hands fumbled with her underwear drawer. She tried to pull it open once, twice, but it wouldn’t budge. She couldn’t tell if it was the dresser itself or if she was just plain drunk. She felt a lot more sober than she had earlier, so she figured it was the dresser. 

On the fifth try of her playing tug-of-war with the drawer, the knob broke off, and the entire damn thing fell out of the dresser. 

It hit the floor with a loud enough sound that Josie was afraid it would make Alyssa come out of the bathroom, but she didn’t. She waited a few seconds before crouching down and picking up everything that had fallen out. 

Her head pounded the entire time. A part of her wanted to set it all on fire and be done with it, but then she wouldn’t have anything to change into after her shower. 

She massaged her temples and kept stuffing all the fallen items back into the drawer. 

It was a minute later, when she was reaching for a lacy red bra, that Josie noticed the diary laying underneath it. She rolled her eyes at the sight of the bra she’d never wear, pushing it to the side. 

The diary itself had a purple cover with dusty, yellow pages inside. The leather was worn and it looked old. But when Josie flipped it open, all the pages were blank. 

It made her pause. She skipped through every page from front to back, but nothing was written inside. No ink or pencil marks. _Nothing_. 

The brunette frowned.

Why would Josie Parker hide a blank diary in her underwear drawer? 

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t seem normal, either. Somehow, she could feel a light thrum of magic pulsating from the book whenever she ran her fingers over the spine. Her heart beat in time with every pulse. She wondered if...

Josie grabbed the book with both hands and siphoned from it experimentally. After a few seconds, she stopped pulling the magic from inside of it and the red glow to her hands vanished. 

When she opened the diary, she nearly dropped it. 

Words started etching themselves across the dusty paper, page after page, until almost the entire diary was full. Sometimes the handwriting changed, but the color of the ink always stayed the same. Red and black, alternating with every entry. 

The first entry was dated a few years back, in a loopy scrawl that was barely eligible. Josie Parker would have been eleven years old when she wrote it. 

** Dear Diary, **

** I hate this stupid school. I hate its stupid rules. I hate this stupid diary. I hate that Emma is forcing me to write in here, I hate that my mom forced me into therapy. I hate her. I hate my sister. They always let me down. Everyone always lets me down. I hate it.  **

** Sincerely,  **

** Josie Parker **

The siphoner cringed, both at the god-awful handwriting and the anger in those words. She decided to just blame it on the girl’s age. Everyone had those kinds of thoughts when they were younger. 

She knew that she shouldn’t, but Josie couldn’t help herself. She skipped down a few lines to read the next entry. 

This time, the handwriting was much neater. It wasn’t loopy, but small and skinny. Almost elegant, even. 

** Hi, Josie. My name is Kai. I’m sorry about your family. I know exactly how you feel.  **


End file.
